Actually... the formatted and bootable HDD that now boots fine with no GRUB related errors in my Celeron laptop gives an I/O error in the P1... while at the same time another working Windows 95 HDD boots up fine in the P1 system...

There was only one active partition on the HDD, nothing else... but I deleted it as you said and created another and it’s finally solved my issue! Boots up to the C prompt. For some reason just formatting the drive wasn’t enough. Another old laptop saved! (Once I install W95 anyways)

Thank you for that. I’ve tried the command and it’s still a no go, I still can’t boot DOS from the hard drive. Perhaps it is failing but it went through an entire W95 install fairly quickly with no issues.

Got an old laptop I picked up ages ago, never tested it until today when I found a suitable power adapter- fired right up! Into some dodgy half functional copy of Linux and not the Windows 95 it was designed for. So I quick formatted the drive using a W98 boot disk and the next time I tried to boot, …

I used a bootable Win98 CD earlier on and used the format command (also tried out the sys command) and all went without a hitch (except the CD did not come with format and neither did my boot floppy so I had to add it.) I’m getting a USB adapter but for now that works, thanks all. I’ve had a couple …

OK thanks for that. Very clear. One final question, do you know if I can run that format command from the W98 boot disk? I have it on both floppy and CD so that would be extremely useful.

When I say no CD drive I mean not a bootable one. However I mainly transfer files and software over to these systems using a PCMCIA - Compact flash adapter, has worked fine for me for many years now. No USB either I'm afraid and there lies the issue. The machines are of the Windows 95-98 era and …

Tearing my hair out trying to find the info I need to be able to do this and I cannot so I thought I'd start a new thread. Apologies if this has already been covered somewhere but I can't find it. I understand the most efficient way to install Windows 9x is to copy the setup files over to the HDD …

I'm running it from a bootable 98SE disk and attempting to run the setup from the Windows setup files I've copied over to the HDD. HDD is 2gb. I am starting to suspect the CD drive in the laptop I am using may be dying and not reading all the drivers/files from the disk correctly as sometimes it …

I can’t run either the Win95 or Win98 setups from my HDD - copied the files over from the install disks. Running “setup” for Win95 hangs Scandisk and gives an “out of memory” message, win98 setup doesn’t start at all and just exits back to a DOS prompt. This is on a 600mhz Celeron with 128mb memory …

It’s not been stored in the wet as far as I know, no. I was thinking hardware issue too since it works fine with the external board. Thanks for the replies. I’ll be annoyed if I can’t find my spare one now, it’s a nice laptop, really good condition, battery still lasts about an hour, has CD and …

Yes so for example when I press 2, the string 82q appears - what I have noticed is it seems to work in “clusters” whereby if I press either 8, 2 or q then it types 82q. Same with w, I and a - if I type any of those it gives iwa. Same with ksz. Also many others. Seems to be in a vague pattern with …

Good evening all, couldn’t find a hello section so... hello from the UK! I’m doing a bit of work on a Toshiba Satellite 430CS and am currently trying to do a clean Windows install on it. Unfortunately most of the keys on the keyboard are typing the wrong thing in both DOS and the copy of Win95 …