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First post, by SpnInquisitor

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Hi,
I've got a problem installing W95 on DELL Optiplex GX1. I try to install the OEM 2.1 version but after booting the installation floppy there's an error message that no cd drive has been detected. The disk is spinning and activity diode is flashing so I think it should be working.
I probably didn't give enough info so if you need some I'm sitting next to the computer. I've opened it and checked all the IDE connectors and even replaced them with new ones but sadly, no results.
I also have one problem with my SD2IDE adapter. Activity diode flashes on the startup (when BIOS' loading) but then after the boot disk starts, the card is not active any more. This is not that much of a problem, 'cause I've got a few IDE hard drives, but I'd like to use the SD card. I've also heard on LGR about some software with which you can install an old windows onto an SD card from a modern PC.
Please help.

Reply 1 of 6, by mbliss11

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Had an issue with my Optiplex GL5100 and a CFtoIDE card with CD rom read errors. Think the board just didn't like it. Once you format the SD card copy the Win95 CD to a directory on there and run setup from CMD line after booting with the boot disk. See if your install works correctly and then try to copy data off of the CD drive once in windows. If it doesn't work you may need to look into another SDtoIDE adapter or you can try updating the BIOS and see if that helps.

Reply 2 of 6, by mbliss11

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Just thought too your installation floppy should have an OAK CD ROM Driver on it when it boots do you see that? Are you using a Win95 or 98 boot disk? You can get floppy images of these boot disks from winworld or other locations.

Reply 3 of 6, by Jo22

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mbliss11 wrote on 2020-07-22, 17:11:

Had an issue with my Optiplex GL5100 and a CFtoIDE card with CD rom read errors. Think the board just didn't like it. Once you format the SD card copy the Win95 CD to a directory on there and run setup from CMD line after booting with the boot disk. See if your install works correctly and then try to copy data off of the CD drive once in windows. If it doesn't work you may need to look into another SDtoIDE adapter or you can try updating the BIOS and see if that helps.

I think that's the best way, also.
Copying WIN95 and DRIVERS directory to HDD is best.
Then run SETUP inside the Win95 directory..

Back then, it was not uncommon that Win9x didn't detect the CD-ROM drive anymore.
It usually happened after Win9x started first time.
That's because it dropped the DOS-bases CD-ROM drivers in favour of its native drivers.
Unfortunately, with loosing access to the installation medium at the same, this didn't succeed. 🙄

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In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

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Reply 4 of 6, by leileilol

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Yeah, it's a common mistake Windows does - try to seek the CD for drivers before it installs any IDE drivers so first time setup hits a snag (which fortunately, in most cases, can be a 'cancel' and a restart prompt away for it to work again). Given Windows 95 was a floppy setup OS, i'm not surprised of that oversight.

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long live PCem

Reply 6 of 6, by asdf53

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Yeah, this is definitely a bug in the Windows CD versions.

After the first setup phase completes and it reboots from hard disk, the DOS CD drivers will not be loaded anymore, and the Windows IDE/SCSI drivers are not installed yet. In this second phase it will try to detect and install additional hardware, but fails because it can't find the CD. The only way to proceed is to click "cancel" at every prompt and install the hardware later.

In one of the next steps it will ask whether to install a sound or networking card - do not check this option. It will fail because it can't copy the drivers, and when setup is finished, you will get lots of missing driver errors and finally explorer.exe will be stuck in an infinite loop because it cannot load "msshrui.dll", rendering the system unbootable. If that happens, boot with F8 to a command line and delete C:\Windows\system\msshrui.dll, reboot, delete any network cards from the device manager, then reinstall them.

When this second phase is finished, it will boot into the third phase, and only then Windows will have its own native CD drivers loaded that don't rely on DOS anymore. But this will only work if the drivers are included on the Windows CD. If you have an exotic CD-ROM or SCSI controller, your choices are:

- Boot from floppy, load CD drivers, copy CD content to hard disk and run setup from there
- If that is not possible (for example, hard disk too small): Boot from floppy, load CD drivers, run setup from CD, and immediately after the first reboot, boot from floppy again and manually copy the CD drivers from floppy to C:\autoexec.bat and C:\config.sys so the Windows setup can use the DOS drivers.