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Old Laptop trick bios = problem

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3 replies

by onlinegeek101

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I have this old compaq lte 5100 and it has a really annoying bios configuration. It has a removable multi bay which i have a cdrom drive and a floppy but only one can be installed at a time. I have a formatted hard drive and I am trying to install windows 98 my problem is i cannot boot to that cd to install 98 and if i boot to the floppy the drivers for the cd wont load i get an error so i cant even copy the files from the cd to that hard drive and install via HD. I was wondering if anyone knows how to boot to cd on this particular machine, or knows a freeware sequential floppy program or that knows any other possible fixes for my situation.

3 replies

by bizzo

Is it possible to enter the bios and change the boot order, CD then HDD?

by ic-it

Create a boot disk with the cdrom drivers.
Boot from the floppy.
format c: /S (makes the hard drive bootable).
Copy over all the files from the floppy.

Check System Files: Check your CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files by either editing them or displaying them to the screen using the command "type config.sys" or "type autoexec.bat". You should see the following:
CONFIG.SYS: There should be a line reading something like "DEVICE=C:\CDROM\CDATAPI.SYS /D:MSCD001", and there may be other "/" parameters in there as well.
AUTOEXEC.BAT: Look for a line that reads "C:\MSCDEX /D:MSCD001". The parameter after "/D:" should match that of CONFIG.SYS. There may be other parameters as well.
Once set power down and install your CD.
Reboot, run smartdrv.exe first, then initiate your Win98 install.

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