Install new OS

I gave up trying to rescue a corrupted WinME. In a clean reinstall process I got to the point where my WinME update disk asked for a FULL previous edition. I was unable to find my Win95 disk. This of course left the PC in a state of limbo as far as an OS is concerned (I believe).

I was fed up with WinME anyway, so I said ***** it and bought a new FULL version of Win2000Pro. I can't get the DOS prompt to cd to my E: drive and read the new 2000 disk.....

HELP in very large letters ...... I'm frustrated at this.........

(also posted under WinME)

 

If you can't set your PC to boot from the CD, you can take the 2K CD to another computer and make a set of start-up floppies. Then boot from #1 and by the time it asks for the CD, proper drivers will be in place to make the CD work.

Instructions for making the boot floppy set (of 4 disks) from any PC having a working CD and your Win2K CD are Here.

 

You could also go here and download a win2kpro boot disk maker from here...

http://freepctech.com/pc/002/files010.shtml

The Win2k is near the bottom...just save it to your HD and unzip the file. There will be 4 exe files, one for every floppy. Run each exe to create your boot disks.

Note: I have used this Win2kPro boot disk maker myself to test installing my win2kpro on a test box that I use.

 

Thanks for the help. I finally got the CD drive to function as #1 BOOT and installed W2Kpro.

Now another problem has floated to the surface.

The Install Wiz never gave me an opportunity to make the 4 diskette Boot Set. But that's not the bad part ........ When I shut down and try to boot again ... I get the message "Boot Record Not Found" and I have to re-install from the CD again.

Obviously I did something wrong, but I don't understand what. Can you help?

 

I think were it me I would wipe out / replace contents of the drive boot sector and then with the CD (or make a set of floppies from another machine using either of the methods already given here) format and install the OS.

To make sure the boot sector is clean, get a boot floppy for Win9X and make sure it has the FDISK command on it. Set the floppy to read-only. And make sure it was prepared from a machine other than the one you are having problems with.

Boot from the floppy and then run the following 2 commands.
Fdisk /mbr
Sys C: (which I'm pretty sure will work in this case)

The combination should completely replace any existing contents of the boot sector which isn't touched at all by a format. There are still some viri around that do bad things to the boot sector and then hide themselves quite well.

Then boot from CD or floppy set for 2K, format, and install the OS.

 

Just an Idea...

My P166 laptop, while BIOS gave me the option to set CDrom as boot device, it also expects to boot from it each time... So until I switch the boot device back to the HDD, I get 'Operating system not found, insert boot media and press any key to continue...'

This was one kind of early 'El Torito' BIOS support. - Not the Best, but a good attempt for a machine sold prior to W95B (SR2).

See if after installing W2K, reseting the BIOS makes any difference.