Starting up a rebuilt PC

Hi.
For free, I got a 2nd hand Pavilion with a Pentium III, but no HDD, no recovery disks, no nothing. So, after formatting an old HDD so that it contained zero bytes of data, I stuck it in the Pavilion, and since the only OS installation disk I have is one for Win95, I have decided to use it, upgrading it to Me with an Me upgrade disk I have lying around.

Not a question about my selection of software, as it will do for my purposes. But I need to somehow get the computer to do more than display the Pavilion initialization screen, as it now does.

I think I need to make a floppy boot disk. I've tried using a Win95 startup disk from another computer, but no luck. Does anyone know what I need to do to get my machine to connect to the CD drive and begin downloading the Win95 program data? Thanks for any/all serious suggestions.

 

Your ME upgrade CD should be bootable. Try putting it in the cdrom and restarting. It will ask for proof of a previous OS and you will have to insert the Win95 CD. It should then do a clean install of ME.

If you are having troulble with cdrom support on your boot floppy, got to bootdisk.com and download either a Win98 or ME bootdisk. These will have cdrom support when booted, as I don't believe that Win95 did.

Hope this helps.

 

Thanks for the suggestion. Sorry for the delay in my response.

I initially tried booting with the ME upgrade, with no luck.

So I tried to boot with a Win 95 startup floppy, no luck.

But then with a Win98 startup disk, I booted and got as far along on the ME upgrade disk as the point you mentioned, where I was asked to insert proof of licensed program. Unfortunately, the only copy of Win98 I have is on a Restore CD that came with another computer, and which was rejected by the Presario.

The Presario came with ME, and I have the MS product key, for whatever its worth.

Following your suggestion, I downloaded from BOOTDISK.COM and tried the startup disks for everything from Win95 to ME. They had at least SOME influence on things: when cold booting with one of those floppies inserted, after the HP logo screen I got a DOS screen message, "Remove disks or other media. Press any key to restart." But after removing the floppy, I could only get an "Invalid system disk..." notice, with or without the ME disk in the tray.

I'm stumped.

 

You say you were able to boot with the Win98SE floppy to the point your CD drives worked, so you should be able to use FDISK to partition & activate your hard drive, and then use the 'format c: /s' command to make the HDD bootable. From that point, you need a licensed Windows CD (full install, not an upgrade) of whatever OS you wanna load...unless you go with Linux or something...

 

If booting from the Win98 boot disk got you along as far as I thought that it would and apparently did, then we've made progress. You will need a full installation CD of either Win 95 or Win98 ( not a restoration CD ) to provide proof of a previous OS to the ME upgrade CD, to complete the installation.

 

Thanks, Wavetar. Could you elaborate on this 'format c: /s' command? From that point on, is everything straighforward, or are there other DOS commands I'll have to use, and operations I'll have to initiate? Thanks again

 

Some clarification:

I've gotten along with FDISK operations to the point of running scandisk on C:, but evetually was allowed to go no further because the Win95 was no accepted. The crux of my problems has been that (A) I've been unable to 'rouse' the computer with anything but a Win98 (first edition) startup floppy made on another computer, (B) that once the computer is 'roused,' I eventually reach a point where, apparently owing to having used the Win98 startup floppy, I am not permitted to install Win95, and (C) I have no licensed '98 installation disk; just the one for '95.

Will the 'format c: /s' operation enable me to bypass this obstacle?

Thanks again

 

Sorry for all the confusion that my post has caused you! Go back to bootdisk.com and download the bootdisk for Win95b, and I believe that this one includes CDROM support. Start your computer with this disk, and insert your Win95 cd. At the A: prompt type cd D:. If it shows Win95, then all you have to do is type setup.exe and hit enter. Hope this helps!

 

Sorry to keep posting on this problem, but I just went back and reread the entire thread, and I have a few questions. How are you creating the bootdisks that you downloaded, and have you went into the bios and changed your boot order? Boot order for the problem that you are having should be D:, A:, and then C:.

 

Eureka! Running 'format c: /s' resolved the problem, regardless of how I had initially roused the computer, evidently by removing from the HD whatever OS-specific information the floppy had provided while booting. So, I quickly got my old Win95 up and running, the rest just being routine upgrading. Thanks to both of you for your assistance, Novice and Wavetar.