Hi all,
i have an old pentium 133 with w95. it is so slow and i thought maybe
and clean install would improve things. i thought i was familiar with
this procedure so firstly i checked the cmos and bios. i was hoping my
teenager would show an interest in this field so i involved him. well i
checked each item and when i came to low and high ide items i noticed
preformat there so i scrolled down for a closer look. i clicked on
preformat and it gave me 3 options of which i chose scan the bad
sectors. when i hit enter a screen popped up flashing a warning"all info
on this drive will be lost". i thought for expedience this is how the
pros must quickly reformat a hard drive so i pressed on to enter. within
a few moments the drive was clean and the task complete. i have the
original start up floppy disk and w95b cd. it seemed now i could simply
load the diska and shut down and reboot the unit. there are no
partitions and the boot process ends with invalid system disk. i tried
the www.bootdisk. programs to no avail. even tried the ubd-ultimate boot
disk. my hard drive is squeaky clean i think and i cannot get w95 to
setup or start. is this hard drive junk now or is it worth salvaging?
the unit worked slowly and would often crash that is why i attemped a
clean install. hope there is cost effective hope. any help would be
greatly appreciated.....bryan

bryan <bryanp7@hotmail.com> wrote:

Of course. If there is not even a partition then the system files
certainly aren't there. Therefore, there's nothing to boot to.
Certainly an "invalid system disk".

I'm not sure what you have tried with bootdisks from www.bootdisk.com.
You should be able to get an A:> prompt when you boot with one of
these disks in the floppy drive. If not, check the boot sequence in
the BIOS setup and make sure that the A: drive is listed before C:.

Once you get the A: prompt you'll need to create at least one
partition on the hard drive. Then reboot, still with the boot floppy
in the floppy drive. Now when you arrive at the A:> prompt, you should
have a C: drive, and you can run setup.exe from the Win95CD, and that
should install the OS.

--
Tim Slattery
MS MVP(DTS)
Slattery_T@bls.gov

"Tim Slattery" <Slattery_T@bls.gov> wrote in message
news:2vknm05mp22jk7kemsmpg4ttfnqplge3ph@4ax.com...
AND after creating the partition ...you will have to format it "A:\format
c:"

"Haggis" <bingsnapREMOVE@THIShotmail.com> wrote:


Oops! Of course, thank you. Create a partition, reboot. Now you have a
"drive letter" assigned to the new partition. Now format, then you can
install the OS.

--
Tim Slattery
MS MVP(DTS)
Slattery_T@bls.gov

"Tim Slattery" <Slattery_T@bls.gov> wrote in message
news:ef1om0dg6maq7nu8gggjr91cbgo3ebs50h@4ax.com...
its Tuesday but feels like Monday :>

"bryan" <bryanp7@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:416B9CB3.8070709@hotmail.com...

with the bootdisk you must run fdisk

then create an active primary partition

reboot the machine then issue the command format C:

once your drive is partitioned and formatted you should be able to
install windows

"philo" wrote:

format several times. Doubled checked all cabling and ribbons all seems to
be in order. When booting up, the system finds my cdrom, but when I try to
install the os from my cdrom cd(oem cd that I have used before tewice to
format this computer)i get the message "invalid drive". I have tried the
whole a-z and still no luck. When I instruct to run win95 setup.exe or any
other command, I receive the message"Bad command or file name". I am
probably doing something wrong or not doing the right thing. Is it the cdrom
driver or its drive letter and if so how do I load its driver and rename its
drive. Thank you for bearing with me....Bryan

The Windows 95 boot floppy does not include cd-rom drivers. Use one of the
utilities at www.bootdisk.com to create a boot floppy. When you boot up the
cd-rom drive will be R:. This may not work if you have a cd-rom drive that
requires proprietary drivers (mostly for those below 8X speed).

Just because your computer's BIOS detects the presence or your CD or DVD
reader (apples to CD and DVD writers too) AND is able to read it's
description in the optical drive's ROM doesn't mean the Operating System
will recognize the optical drive. Many computers were designed with a
BIOS that could access the data stored on floppy drives and IDE hard
drives, but not IDE optical drives. On these computers the boot floppy,
normally in drive A: must contain software to access the optical drive
AND contain commands in the "config.sys" and "autoexec.bat" files to
load that software into the computer's memory.

A CONFIG.SYS file might contain:

DEVICE=A:\COMMAND\HIMEM.SYS
DEVICE=A:\COMMAND\EMM.386.EXE RAM V
DOS=HIGH,UMB
FILES=50
DEVICE=A:\DRIVERS\MTMCDAI.SYS /R:CDROM01

The last line loads the driver

An AUTOEXEC.BAT might contain:

ECHO ON
PROMPT=$P$G
MSCDEX /E /V /D:CDROM01 /L:R
SET PATH=A:\; A:\COMMAND

These files are written to accommodate DOS commands in a \commands
folder and device drivers in a \drivers folder, both on drive A:.

The DOS "format" command isn't loaded into you computer's memory when
the command line interpreter is active. Disk formatting is accomplished
with an external command loaded from the "format.com" file, normally
located on the drive the computer is booted from. Without that file in
one of the directories in your path (see the "SET PATH=…" line above)
you wouldn't be able to format either floppy or hard drives.

Optical drive access is established by the
"DEVICE=A:\DRIVERS\MTMCDAI.SYS…" line in CONFIG.SYS and the "MSCDEX…"
command in AUTOEXEC.BAT. With some CD drives you may need to substitute
some other characters for the "MTMCDAI" portion, corresponding to the
file name for you particular make and model of optical drive. I like to
give the optical drive a high letter so that its letter will not change
when hard drives or hard drive partitions are added later. Those letter
changes can become a problem if they occur after you have installed
applications that read data from a CD or check to make sure you have an
original publisher pressed CD.


bryan wrote:

"Kay Archer" wrote:

"RobertVA" wrote:

"bryan" <bryan@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:1F18D9C6-2386-40E2-88C5-3D01B93BDE76@microsoft.com...
looks like its an ACER ...have a look here

http://www.cdrom-drivers.com/drivers/70/70717.htm