Does IBM Aptiva PC reinstall from hard drive?

[NRGeti]

I have an old IBM Aptiva Windows 95 PC which needs to be reinstalled due to corrupted files. Is there a hidden image partition on the hard drive that can be used to reinstall?

The drive itself has two paper labels stuck on it. One is a part number and has the words "Image HDD" on it. The other has a different part number and just states, "HDD".

If I run Partition Magic to look at the disk, it issues an error which says that the partition boundary on this drive needs to be reset. Is this a real error or does this indicate a hidden partition?

If I try to reinstall from a Windows 95 CD, I get a message that it has found a disk-cache or compression utility and to remove it before continuing with the install. What does this mean?

I know that some of the newer IBM PCs use the F12 key to activate the recovery partition.

 

[kestrel1]

You may have a hidden partition, but there is also a problem with the partition table. Partition Magic can sometimes fix these problems, but it may not be able too.
I would be inclined to boot up with a DOS floppy disk & use fdisk to remove all the partitions & then do a clean install from your Windows 95 CD.

 

[roland63]

I second "kestrel1" and since the hard drive will be wiped clean, why not take the opp to upgrade to say..W2K?

If you decide to go with W2K remember to remain FAT32 for if W2K can't be provided with drivers, you at least have the option to install W95 once again...

 

[kestrel1]

I would only install Win2K if the machine is up to it.
The minimum spec for Windows 2K is a 133mhz Pentium or higher processor & 64mb RAM.
Personally I would only consider Windows 2K on a 400mhz processor & an absolute minimum of 128mb RAM. What is the spec of your IBM machine?

 

[NRGeti]

This model is physically limited to 32M RAM and only 2Gigs of hard drive space. So I think we will have to stay at Win95.

It probably is not worth trying to save. My client has found a cheap, refurbished IBM Netvista PC which will serve his needs much better. It also has Windows XP Pro on it.

 

[kestrel1]

Probably a better idea to ditch this machine if it has that sort of memory restriction. This may be improved with a BIOS update, but I dought that it is worth the trouble.