reinstalling OS - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

Snibble · #1 09-07-2003, 12:08 AM

I know there are several computer knowledgable people here on the board and I hope someone here can help me out with my problem. I have an HP omnibook xe2 laptop I got new as a gift a couple years ago. Its a nice laptop.. however now I want to reinstall the win98se OS. I found the recovery cd.. however, I only found the part 2 cd. I am missing the 1st cd. I emailed HP hoping they can send me the missing CD.. but I will see what happens. My question is.. is there a way to reinstall the OS without the CD? Or.. should I completely erase the hard drive and install a win98 CD? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks
Sharif

#2 09-07-2003, 10:13 AM

Sharif,
If it was me I would format the hard drive and reinstall Win98. With use Windows hogs up lot of hard drive space and leaves files no longer needed. By doing a fresh install you computer should get a new life and function better. I would install Windows second edition as it is more stable. Here is a link to further investigate : http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;259181
My 2 cents and best of luck.

xp190 · #3 09-07-2003, 03:11 PM

Might want to be careful since some of the brand name laptops have a very small partition which is especially made for booting and might not allow a bootable CD to work, especially OS CDs. In most cases this partition is perm and there is no way to wipe it, well not one I have found, but you can still manage. I usually copy the contents of every OS CD to the hd before a fresh install, it just goes quicker this way.

xp

DuckMuck · #4 09-07-2003, 06:00 PM

Do you not have to rely on the recovery CD for installation...a standard Windows98SE CD is enough...the latest drivers can be found on HP/Compaq's website...as well as BIOS updates...these are more than enough...

#5 09-07-2003, 11:27 PM

You might consider moving on and doing a fresh install of a newer OS, like purchasing a full install of XP Home.

If you have enough RAM and HD space this may be an option.

#6 09-08-2003, 08:27 AM

However if the computer is couple of years old you may not be able to load a new OS as there are different hardware and system requirements. If it worked well with the 98 OS I would stick with it but upgrade to second edition. I have reinstalled 98 and had no problems.
Best of luck.

Snibble · #7 09-08-2003, 09:09 AM

hi guys.. I think I am in a mess right now. I had win98SE, but I went to msdos and formatted the drive. Well, after restarting the computer and had a winXP cd in the dvd-rom drive and nothing happened. so I started typing things in to see what I can do. I typed in "erase c:" and it asked me if I am sure. I typed in "yes" thinking it will full erase the hard drive and making it easy to instal the Windows XP cd designed for computers w/o an OS. Well.. now I get a message saying "'Type the name of the command >interpreter (egc:\windows\command.com)".

NOTHING happens when I type in anything.. and I have no clue what to do. I did an online search and found a similar problem , I did what they said to do and still nothing.

oh BTW... I am not sure if the laptop's HD is totally free of windows98... because for a second I see the "welcome to windows 98" screen... the same screen you see everytime you start up the computer. Any help with resloving this problem is greatly appreciated.

Right now I am using the computer at work to get on here... so Shhh!!!

later!

Snibble · #8 09-08-2003, 10:05 AM

tkmaiya.. thanks for replying. I just got off the phone with HP and they said that it would be hard to find the recovery CD becuase MSFT doesn't produce Win98 anymore... and it would cost atleast $45. Is there anyways I can TOTALLY erase the HD? I want to completely erase everything and install the win XP CD I have. Thanks again.. and please keep the replies coming

Zeus · #9 09-08-2003, 11:26 AM

Snibble - if you want to completely erase the C: drive then the full DOS command to do so is "format c: /s" The space and the "/s" makes the partition bootable - basically you add the command.com file. This command will totally erase your C:/ drive except for the essential boot files. It's handy to be able to boot to your new drive directly. Make sure you put in a space between the colon and the "/s".

If you are not sure about how many partitions you have, you can run the command "fdisk" from DOS to re-partition your drive into one large partition instead of a couple of smaller ones (not sure how many you have - you may already only have one in which case, you don't need to do this).

You should be able to do all of this from the Win98 boot disk. Make you you choose the option to start windows with CD-ROM support, this will load the drivers to allow you to re-load whatever OS you need to once you've reformatted the drive.

Snibble · #10 09-08-2003, 06:44 PM

zeus... I tried doing what you said, but nothing happend.

tkamiya.. whats a "fdisk"?

Here is my symptom so far... I hit the power button to my laptop and the laptop boots up. It goes to the "welcome to windows" screen... the one that has the window's logo in the clouds. It stays there for a split second and then this message pops up:

"Type the name of the Command Interpreter (e.g., C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND.COM)
C> "

I am still stuck at this step. Here is what I want to do... erase Win98SE totally... so I can boot my Win XP CD. HP tech support is not really all that supportive

Zeus · #11 09-08-2003, 09:22 PM

"fidisk" is used to format the hard drive disk - to create partitions.

you need to boot your laptop from a floppy disk - a win98 boot disk - do you have one? if your laptop doesn't boot from the floppy first, you may have to tweak the BIOS.

once you boot from the floppy, then run "format c: /s" and it will wipe your C drive clean.

it's funny...i'm doing this right now to my girlfriend's PC. her PC was toasted by a power surge during the big power outage (even though it had a 'surge protector' power bar). we've now bought 'real' surge protectors and i've built her a new PC...i'm loading the OS on it right now...