First post, by blacknite
Background:
Machine is a HP Pavilion 3100 with Pentium MMX 166 with 48MB of SDRAM.
I acquired the machine with no hard drive.
I put in a harddrive that already has Windows 98 SE on it from a previous build (40GB Quantum drive), It is recognized in the bios as ~8.5GB but the full 37Gb is seen in Windows. The BIOS also recognizes the CD Drive
Windows was able to boot without safe-mode from the old installation, however as to be expected it was missing many drivers, including the Plug and Play BIOS driver.
In an attempt to salvage this install I put my copy of Win 98 SE in the disc drive and found that the Activity light on the drive stays on when there is a disc inserted (I personally have never seen a PC do that before)
I also found that windows did not mount the disk drive. Unsure on the status of the CD drive I swapped is for a known good one (52X reader from 2000). It had the same "Activity LED stays on when the disc is inserted" so I assume that is a function of the BIOS. Still no D drive. At this point I decide that due to the lack of installed drivers I am not going to be able to get anywhere easily with this installation of Windows so I decide to start fresh. In a last ditch effort I instert the Win 98 SE boot disk and select "Start computer with CD-ROM support". This is where my real issue begins.
No matter if I attempt to "Start computer with CD-ROM support" or the Start Windows 98 Setup option I get the following result:
DOS gets to the Point of Mounting the CD drive and Hangs. The HDD LED is left blinking continously and the CD LED blinks continously. flashing cursor on screen. PC is frozen (NUM Lock not responsive when pressed).
If I eject the CD the HDD light stops flashing but the CD light does not.
I have attempted this with Plug and Play BIOS both on and off. Not Sure what to try next, was really hoping to use this as my Quarantine Machine.
Item to note:
The WIN 98 SE disc and Boot Floppy were both created last night. I used PowerISO to burn both the disc and the Floppy Image.