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installing Win 95

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While loading win 95, I received the error message: Your comp. doesn’t have a hard drive, your hard disk is not functioning correctly, or your hard disk requires a special device. I purchase a Gateway 133mhz P5 for setting up a network. however, I am having this problem. The harddrive is install correctly but when I try to boot the system the above error message comes up.

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installing Win 95

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installing Win 95

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Sounds like a bad hard drive to me. Try putting another hard drive in there. I’ve had this problem before as well and it was a bad drive.

Good luck!

installing Win 95

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I switched hd and I got the same result. Also, I am getting the same error message in the comp. that I removed the working hard drive.

installing Win 95

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1.Check the cable – primary/secondary IDE controller and jumpers Master/Slave. Make it primary IDE – Master.
2.Check BIOS settings – is your HD detected?
3.Boot to DOS prompt and try to run “fdisk” – can you see your HD? Delete the existing partition/partitions and create a new one.
4.After restarting try to format HD.
5.If it won’t work – buy a new one.

installing Win 95

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3.Boot to DOS prompt from floppy and …

installing Win 95

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installing Win 95

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Depending on which version of 95 you are trying to install there is an upper limit to the size of the hard drive that windows will see. What is the size of the hard drive? The early versions of 95 partitions had to be 2 gigs or less.

To see if this is it, Partition your drive to have 1- 2 gig partition. leave the rest of the drive un partition for the time being. Try loading windows on that 2 gig partition.

Go to

http://search.support.microsoft.com/kb/c.asp

and read

Q118335 -Maximum Partition Size Using FAT16 File System
Q126855 – Windows Support for Large IDE Hard Disks
Q154997 – Description of the FAT32 File System
Q245213 – Fdisk.exe Limits Non-MS-DOS Partition End to 8 GB

These Are a few that I think will get you in the right direction

e-mail me if you need more help

JP

installing Win 95

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installing Win 95

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Microsoft is screwed. Check the hard drive for errors. or try running any program that uses your hard drive. You might want to reinstall your hard drive. Or check your bios settings as well.

installing Win 95

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installing Win 95

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first of boot from win 98 cd-rom and then use fdisk to wipe out the partitions present on the hardisk and then format the harddisk type format c: (drive letter) /u

this should do fine

installing Win 95

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installing Win 95

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I think the HD you have installed is with FAT32 and Win95 will not accept it, so boot with a startup disk run FDISK remove all the partitions, make it again with FAT16 (Win95 startup disk)

installing Win 95

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installing Win 95

In reply to installing Win 95

Sounds like you bought it used? A p5-133 might have even started its life as a 486 before a CPU upgrade. The BIOS is probably quite old and doesn’t understand big drives.

A larger hard drive may have been added later in the machines life, and the BIOS didn’t handle drives that large. Drive manufacturers included utilities to deal with this. The utilities put a “wedge” of code in the boot block that takes over for the BIOS and teaches the system how to use the drive. Once a wedge is installed, you must always boot first from the hard drive to execture it, then if you had wanted to boot from a floppy you insert the floppy when the system tells you to, after the initial hard drive boot.

If one of these wedges is used, the machines BIOS is set to something that will seem non-sensical to you, because during the boot from hard drive the real settings are picked up from the hard drive boot block. You mentioned the drive was “not installed properly” so I think this might be what threw you for a loop.

You need to look for the hard drive utility. It might be on a floppy you got with the system. For Maxtor drives, it is called MAXblast. Western Digital used one called EZ-drive. You might have to call the drive manufacturer or get a copy from their web site to get it working if you didn’t get this on a floppy.

If you have booted, say, a Windows startup floppy and overwritten part of the hard drive, you are toast now until you reinstall the hard drive wedge utility. Windows will no longer understand your drive geometry. Also, W2K specifically doesn’t like these wedge utilities, at least not if you try to use NTFS file system – it will throw up and complain. W95 and W98 work fine with the wedges.

installing Win 95

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installing Win 95

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Please let me know if any of the above worked for this 3-month old issue. Thanks.

installing Win 95

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installing Win 95

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