Re-install with removable floppy/CD drive

[KatherineCoombs]

Hi all,

hopefully an easy one! I have an old laptop that needs to be rebuilt. What I usually do is boot into DOS, do an fdisk and then start from scratch again. Nice and easy. The problem with this particular laptop is that the floppy and CD are interchangeable, in that you can't have both in the machine at once, so I'm scratching my head here.

If I boot into DOS it doesn't recognise the CD drive, even if it's in the laptop. So I'm wondering how on earth to fdisk and reload Windows 98 here?! Any ideas??

Cheers,
K

 

[Marcs41]

Boot from the CD?

Marc
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[wolluf]

If you need to fdisk & format first - do that from win98 boot floppy & then try Marc's suggestion of booting from CD (if you can chnage bios settings to do so)

 

[AirCon]

Hi K,

If the BIOS do not support boot from CD then you can boot from floopy first. FDisk and mark the HD partition as "Active partition" and Format your harddisk with system ( /S ). Then copy all files from Boot floopy into HD.

Change the Floopy drive with CD drive and boot from HD with CD-ROM support

Regards

 

[edfair]

You get your DOS up and running on the hard drive and install CD support on it. Verify that it works in DOS and that the CD drivers error out on boot. Then you switch drives and install the OS. With the potential problem that the CD will not be found by the OS.
This will force you to have DOS compatible partitions, but that is the price you pay.
Another option is installing from the hard drive with the install files tranferred thru the parallel port off a CD or ZIP drive.

Ed Fair
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