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New hard drive-- how to load windows

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6 replies

by jkir3216

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This may sound very elementary to you guys.
A friend has put a new hard drive in her Dell. I have been recruited to help her.
-Anyway, all I have is a Dell computer with the "C:\>" prompt and a Microsoft Windows 98 SE floppy boot disk.

I don't know if this is enough info, or if I even have what I need to make it operational, but any help would be much appreciated.

6 replies

by cg it

humm if all do is boot to a c:\> command prompt and all you got there is a W98 boot disk then your going to need to get a Windows Operating System [O/S] CD, whatever flavor [98,ME [god forbid] 2000,XP] boot to the CD and install the O/S.

by dustyd

I am going to assume that you don't have an OS disk, and that you want to upgrade the drive to a larger model. You should leave the old drive installed, and add the new one. You will need to make sure that jumpers are correct on the rear of both drives, so that the original is master and the new one is slave. Connect the second drive to the same ribbon cable using the middle connector in the cable. This way, you boot to the old drive. Before going farther, let me know if this is the scenario you are working with.

by queen1

Hi,
The best way is to copy the CAB files directly to the HD. This way win98 becomes self healing of sorts and you'll never need to try and find the cd when making system changes and installing new hardware, ect.Also if win98 becomes corrupt you can reinstall without losing your data. I suggest you print the the instructions from link below and work off the print out.Link:
http://home.pacbell.net/dbk4297/preinstall.html

When ever windows asks for the disk just point it to C:win98.
Hope she at least makes you dinner !

by swampdoc

You should have a series of Dell CD's that came with the system. Take the one marked "Reinstallation CD" and put in the CD drive. It should be bootable. Follow the instructions after that.

by zlitocook

If you do not have the Restore CD'S or Windows 98 CD, you will have to Acquire one. You can still buy it in some computer stores, You can buy it on Ebay. Both can be expensive, but if you use a Win98 CD you will also need to download the drivers from Dell for the system board, on board sound, video ect. What you need to do is easy if you have every thing you need at hand. Good luck!

by p.j.hutchison

YOu need to boot from a 98 Floppy, run FDISK and create a new Primary Partition (use the default to fill the disk), then type FORMAT C: to format it.
Change drive to CDROM and type SETUP to install Windows 98SE on new partition.

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