Need help installing from a Packard Bell restore CD \ VOGONS

Need help installing from a Packard Bell restore CD

Topic actions

First post, by EvieSigma

Posted on 2020-01-05, 04:38

EvieSigma Offline

Rank Oldbie

Rank: Oldbie
Posts: 590
Joined: 2020-01-05, 04:32
Location: Pennsylvania, USA

I recently acquired a very nice Packard Bell system, a Legend 401CD (75MHz Pentium, "4x4" desktop form factor) that was seemingly wiped at some point and had a generic installation of Windows 98SE put on. I want to reinstall the factory software package this computer shipped with in 1995 but I've been having a lot of trouble. I have no idea which boot diskette matches my restore CD I made (170366, Sept. 1995) and so I can't actually boot off the restore CD to install 95, I just keep running into errors. The only place I had found the diskettes on doesn't say which CDs they go with:

https://ryan.tliquest.net/pb-restore/

Is there some better resource out there I just don't know? Could I get some help here, maybe?

Reply 1 of 3, by chinny22

Posted on 2020-01-06, 12:50

chinny22 Offline

Rank l33t++

Rank: l33t++
Posts: 5465
Joined: 2011-08-26, 12:02
Location: Australian but living in the UK for now

Never owned a PB so not familiar with their restore CD's. Plus I hate restore CD's and the bloat anyway.
I'd say your better off installing of a generic Windows CD with up to date drivers and manually installing any of the PB "bloat" you actually want.
A lot will be generic software like Adobe reader, WinZip, etc which you can either get newer versions or the same version from places like www.oldversion.com
plus things you'll probably uninstall anyway like realplayer, quicktime, messanger programs.

The CD may have an option to allow you to reinstall software on an existing install of windows as well. So you may be lucky and be able to use generic Windows CD and still have the authentic experence

Reply 2 of 3, by derSammler

Posted on 2020-01-06, 12:54

derSammler Offline

Rank l33t

Rank: l33t
Posts: 3886
Joined: 2017-04-14, 11:30

EvieSigma wrote on 2020-01-05, 04:38:
The only place I had found the diskettes on doesn't say which CDs they go with:

Just try the few that are marked with "Starting Windows95". They are probably not doing much apart from loading a CD driver and executing some setup file from the restore disc anyway.

Reply 3 of 3, by EvieSigma

Posted on 2020-01-06, 21:48

EvieSigma Offline

Rank Oldbie

Rank: Oldbie
Posts: 590
Joined: 2020-01-05, 04:32
Location: Pennsylvania, USA

Yeah, I ended up figuring it out yesterday, turns out I was making the diskette wrong. And then I forgot that the original version of 95 can't be installed onto a FAT32 volume on top of that. Once I fixed those issues, I was up and running! As for bloatware, I probably will uninstall some of the stuff, but I feel that having Packard Bell Navigator is mandatory on a Packard Bell.

Go to top of page Go to top of page

Back to General Old Hardware