Command prompts

[Tigerdog]

G'day people who know about computers. I am hoping someone here can tell me which command prompt I should be entering when I try and install win98 onto a new Hard Drive.

I was going to set the new HD as a slave to the old one, have no problems with the physical installation, but once in (as the slave) the pc doesn't seem to recognise that it now has a whole heap more HD space available.

Someone suggested installing win98 onto the new HD and then copying all of the info on the existing HD over to the new one.
So I installed the new HD (at this stage on it's own) and tried to install my copy of win98 onto it.
Well, everything was going along ok UNTIL the pc asked me for a command prompt.
I don't know anything about command prompts so I got stuck at this point and haven't been able to install my new HD.


Can anyone offer any help or suggestions??

 

[Tigerclan]

http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=14700253

This seems to deal with Win 98

What size HD are you slaving?

Win 98 doesn't have the HD support that the newer versions have.

 

[Tigerdog]

Thanks TC. I will check those out. Thanks also for the pm's.

I think my present HD is 6 g and runs MS2000.
The new HD I have is 120 g

Feel free to drop into chat if you have the time. ;D

 

[Tigerclan]

120G should be OK, they start to rewrire over the top at about 130G, pain in the bum

I'll pop into the chat when I get a chance cheers :beer

 

[Tigerdog]

G'day again TC.
I did as you said in the PM. But then I got the following message:

Cannot create a temporary directory.
If you have a HPFS or NTFS installed on your hard drive, you will need tocreate an MS-DOS boot partition to set up Windows.

Then below that I am given the following (which I assume is waiting for another command.

A:\>


Would I be better to try and making the 120g HD the slave to the 6g one, again?
If I did that though, how would I then get the computer to recognise it?

My guess would be to go into the set-up screen just after booting and setting one as a master and slave in there, but I really wouldn't know what to do. Unless it is fairly self explanatory.

Thanks again for your help, it is much appreciated. :clap

 

[Tigerclan]

Are you trying to do a dual boot, one drive Win98 the other a more recent version?

I would make the larger disk the slave (ie install on the smaller drive)

How is the hard disk formatted??? Win98 wont install on a newer version, Win2000 tends to be an NFTS file system (needs to be a FAT drive), so you will need to reformat the drive.

On install does it give you the option to delete everything on the drive, if you delete the partition it will give you the option to reformat.

If this is not working we may have to go into DOS to reformat.

This obviously depends on whether you are trying to dual boot and have data on that drive which you don't want to lose!!!

I used to have two hard drives, one with Win2000 for me and the other with win98 for my son as his games wouldn't play on 2000. It took me a little while to get the dual thing happening.

 

[Tigerdog]

;D Can I have that in English please ;D Haha just joking TC. I am not very good with computers as you can obviously see.

The smaller drive is running Win2000 Professional. It has all my programs and evrything on it so I don't want to wipe it as such.

Originally I was just planning to install the 120g as the slave because my small hd was nearing capacity.

Then the guy from the computer store said maybe I should just install win98 on the 120g drive and copy over the existing info from my small 6g drive.
He said win2k Prof. Is more for business users or something.

Anyway when I am trying to install win98 on the larger 120g drive, I am doing it as the master with no slave. So it is physically the only drive in the pc at the time.

I still think it would be easier to just keep running win2k Prof. and install the larger drive as the slave. I have tried this, and had no drama with the physical installation and setting the master and slave, but the pc doesnt seem to recognise the slave.

Are you trying to do a dual boot, one drive Win98 the other a more recent version?

I would make the larger disk the slave (ie install on the smaller drive)
I don't want to install 98 on the smaller drive as it has all my current programs etc on it.
The larger 120g drive is a blank canvass. And to be honest I don't know if I have formatted it or not :-[ as I purchased it awhile ago and got annoyed that I couldn't get it to work as the slave to the smaller drive.

How is the hard disk formatted??? Win98 wont install on a newer version, Win2000 tends to be an NFTS file system (needs to be a FAT drive), so you will need to reformat the drive.


On install does it give you the option to delete everything on the drive, if you delete the partition it will give you the option to reformat.

If this is not working we may have to go into DOS to reformat.

This obviously depends on whether you are trying to dual boot and have data on that drive which you don't want to lose!!!

I used to have two hard drives, one with Win2000 for me and the other with win98 for my son as his games wouldn't play on 2000. It took me a little while to get the dual thing happening.

I have no real use for win98 and am happy to continue with 2000 but I was just going on what the guy at the computer shop had told me (see above for explanation).

Once again thanks for taking time out to assist me. :clap

 

[Tigerclan]

Are you having difficulties with Win2000????

Unless you have progs that don't run on Win2000 I wouldn't change, it is a much classier and stable OS. If you are a game player then you may find some games wont work.

If you have problems getting the computer to recognise the slave its because of the switches on the back of the drive (little 'pegs' across a double row of prongs) you will notice they have letters above them (M for master, S for Slave etc), I just usually remove them on the slave drive (probably not the recommended way but it works for me ;D)

Once installed, you can get the computer to recognise it by going into Bios (press del at start up).

Then once into Win2000, explore, right click on new drive and format disk. Win2000 usually runs on NTFS filing which is again more stable than FAT

 

[Tigerdog]

No problems with win2000 TC. So am happy to keep it. Except for a complete lack of sound, but that is nothing to do with win2k. More like a driver problem, although I did download and try a few different drivers for the inbuilt soundcard and nothing seemed to work. Maybe my 466 processor is too ancient or something I don't know. So I bought a 4/6 PCI sound card and installed that and its' drivers instead but the same problem persisted.
The sound only comes out in fits and starts of about .02 of a second when playing cd's or mp3's. However the start up noise played just fine.
Could this possibly be because of the processor or maybe the fact that the original 6g hard drive was approaching capacity?? :don't know
Either way it is a hassle but I don't want to put it in the shop to get it repaired because then I will miss out on PRE for a few days. ;D That is why I would rather try and nut it out in this way. And also because I don't like to donate money to computer stores if it is something relatively easy to fix, which it more than likely is.
I went and bought a set of 5.1 surround sound speakers which sounded great on my mates PC when tested. But when plugged into my pc the above problems were encountered.
So any advice on the above would be appreciated As when test the sound card it says that the device is working normally.


I have been changing the little pegs as required to master or slave so I have been doing that righ at least. ;D

OK TC thanks for that, I will write it down and give it a go and get back to you with the results.

 

[Tigerclan]

You may have a conflict between the onboard sound card and your new one.

If you enter the CMOS setup Utility on boot up (press DEL}

In Intregated Peripherals disable the sound card

That should allow your new one to work if it is a conflict (I hate sound cards, I have had every trouble under the sun with them)

Your processor is fine for Win2000, we only upgraded from similar a year or so ago and then we started running XP.

Free up some room on your hard drive, it does make a difference. We are currently running a 40G and a 120 G slave plus a 160

G USB external and we still run out of space (and thats just one computer, we have three networked together.)

I regularly wipe the main drive and reinstall. So make sure you back up all your important data. I keep mine in a number of

places.

Try not to keep anything on the smaller drive other than the OS, though if you try running some programs from the slave it will

slow them down

 

[Tigerdog]

Thanks TC, thought I had disabled the inbuilt soundcard but it appears that for some reason the new one won't work just yet. I will refer back to your response once I have dealt with the HD problem.

Oh dear :-[ what have I done. I went away and set the 120g hard drive as the slave and installed it physically. Then upon start up and pressing delete, it wouldn't go into BIOS??
I tried several times without success but will give it another go shortly. My pc takes ages to start up so it is quite a time consuming hassle lol.

Anyway once I let it boot up as normal I now have an extra icon at the bottom right toolbar that says Local area connection 2 Network cable unplugged.
I didn't even have a LAN network set up. However I did ad a network card this afternoon (I think that is what it is called) because I want to run one of those blue cables from my phone line (Dsl connection) to the PC as I was told it was much better than the current normal type phone line extension that I use. So I am guessing it has something to do with that rather than me having actually physically unplugged anything.

Anyway I will leave now and try and get into bios again. Back soon.

 

[Tigerclan]

Oh dear ;D

Yeah don't worry about the LAN, just meand it's unplugged

At least it's detecting something ;D

 

[Tigerdog]

Ok here is the latest TC. Haha thanks for being patient with a computer ignoramus who is clearly out of his depth.

I got into Bios and then the CMOS set up utility then IDE HDD Auto detection and pressed enter.
Came up as "Detecting Hard drive' but then nothing happened.
I waited about 5 minutes but still nothing. Not even "couldn't be found" and especially not "drive detected" How long is it supposed to take to detect?

I tried to do what you said here "Once installed, you can get the computer to recognise it by going into Bios (press del at start up).

Then once into Win2000, explore, right click on new drive and format disk."

But couldn't find the win2000, explore or 'new drive' options and so that is why I tried to get the thing to auto detect.

 

[Tigerclan]

it should auto detect pretty quickly if everthing is okay, does it recognise your original HD?, it might be that you need to swap positions on the ribbon cable - another simple thing but can make the world of difference.  It might be you need to take all the switches out  --  oh you can see the fun I have had in the past

Once installed, you can get the computer to recognise it by going into Bios (press del at start up).    Here I intended you to auto detect

Then once into Win2000, explore, right click on new drive and format disk. Win2000 usually runs on NTFS filing which is again more stable than FAT     Here I meant when you saved to CMOS and then booted normally into Win2K sorry

 

[Tigerdog]

Thats cool TC. As I said it is all pretty much a foreign language to me, but it is good to learn, even if it is the hard way. ;D

I will try swapping the ribbons over and give it another go.

Cheers :clap

No doubt I will be back here in 10 to 20 with some more reported problems LOL.

Thanks again for your patience, help and understanding. :clap I would have had your karma up near Rosy's if it was still about. :hihi

 

[Tigerclan]

Tigerdog I'm only translating between you and Mrs TC, I find it foreign too, good on you for having a go at installing

hardware. I'm hiding in here for a while so Mrs TC and Ms Cass don't catch me talking about poo in the gardening thread.

Happy to alert her to your replies.

 

[Tigerdog]

Haha TC. I saw that little spat over on the poo I mean gardening thread. :hihi

I swapped the ribbons over, and tried to get into bios again but it didn't work.
Now my net connection seems really really slow. Unrelated I am sure, but I am sick of starting up the pc for now. : So might leave it until tomorrow before having another go. As I mentioned before my pc takes forever to start up. I don't know if it is because the old Celeron 466 is not up to it or because the hd is nearly full, or what but it 'gets old' really quickly waiting for it to finally be ready for use after start up.
I might just stick around for now unless I get the urge to try again later.

 

[Tigerclan]

Hi Tigerdog

Your machine will be running very slow if the HD is over 60% full

We are using only 8G out of 40G to run the system and it flies.

Are you loading lots of programs at startup?

Mrs TC is hoping she's not confusing you about Bios, ours is called Ambibios

But it is the CMOS you are entering when pressing Del don't try to change your BIOS

You were in the right place when auto detecting hard drives.

Does it detect anything of your other drives?

Maybe disconect the 120G and see what posi the 6G HD is in through your CMOS and whether

It's detecting it OK.

Bed Time, 2 sleeps to go