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laptop formating w/ floppy/cdrom support

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3 replies

by hispeed2g

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I am new to IT and need to format a hard drive on a IBM Thinkpad that has removable floppy/cd-rom drives. I wish to reinstall with win 98 although I don't want to format if I can't have the cd-rom to install with. I have heard of making ghost cd'sbut have no Idea what is involved. I burn't a copy of a startup disk with noluck in the startup. The Bios gives me no option to boot from cd-rom, only floppy. any advice on this matter would be greatly apreciated.

3 replies

by madroxxx

you probably need to order a cable to run your floppy at the same time as cd. You wont be able make a ghost image without a burner or an external harddrive, besides it defeats the purpose of a reinstall.

by aclopez5

Don't format the hard drive. I would boot into the existing OS, and copy the Win98 directory from the CD to a directory on the HD. I would then reboot into "Command Prompt Only" (press F8 during boot-up) and use DelTree.exe to erase everything on the HD except the Win98 install files you copied over. A few things to remember: the 'deltree.exe' file is the \windows\command directory. Copy it to the root of the harddrive temporarily. Don't delete the system files on the root of the harddrive (command.com, msdos.sys, io.sys, drvspace.bin). Then run setup from the directory you copied from the CD.

by griffo

Not being able to boot from CD Makes it hard, Have you attached the CD then rebooted then tried to change the bios to go to the CD. Other wise the above solution seams the only way.

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