Try to get the machine to boot from the CD and install windows that way, if nothing works you might want to use another system to install 98 to the CF card and then put it back in the Compaq. A quick tip you can dump all the drivers into a folder after installing 98 on the CF card before putting back in the Compaq so you wont have to suffer any disks.

If you disconnect the CF adapter (completely, not just pull out the CF card) and try to boot from the floppy, does it still hang at the "starting MS-DOS"?

nforce4max wrote:

Try to get the machine to boot from the CD ...

This is a laptop without a built-in optical drive.

Another possibility since he has a CF card reader in his new computer would be to mount the compact flash card to virtualbox as a raw virtual machine disk. He could then install whichever OS he would like to it and load it with all the games and files he would like.

I have to get to bed now unfortunately (just doing my pre-sleep browsin ) but if nothing else can get you going, I can try to guide you through it tomorrow night.

As far as I can understand, your PC's BIOS has a 8GB HDD limit. Partitioning and formatting is the later steps, if your computer cannot correctly recognize HDD (CF card in your case) in the first place, these operations (under normal conditions) will yield to nothing. So, your options are:

- Maybe an update for your BIOS is available, which could eliminate the HDD size limit, either an offcial update or an unofficially patched one.

- Use a DDO software like Ontrack (or brand specific versions of it) which bypasses BIOS limitations. Personally, never tried those with CF cards, but I expect it to work.

- For real HDDs, Seagte Seatools hels a lot in situations like this (formatting the drive according to the BIOS limitations). But I have no idea if this also works for CF cards.

- Find a 8GB (or less) CF card 😊

I assumed your FDD works correctly (i.e.: you can boot from the floppy disk when CF is not connected)

Hi! Thanks for all the responses!

So I unplugged the IDE CF card and booted DOS 6.22 successfully for the first time. I went into FDISK and deleted the non-DOS partition and created a new DOS partition.

When I went to reboot after this, the first message I got was something to the effect of "no operating system." Subsequent boots appear to bring me back to the whole hanging at Starting MS-DOS thing.

What else, what else...I've tried to plug the CF card back in after DOS loads but FDISK can't see it...

I brought the CF card (which now has the DOS partition, allegedly) to the new computer and I'm being told that the disk is not readable and needs to be formatted. Assumedly because it's a DOS partition and W10 can't recognize it. So it's basically one step forward, two steps back.

Regarding F-Disk, you'll want a newer version than the one that comes with DOS 6.22. I found out the hard way.

Try making a Windows 98 boot disk and see if you can boot from that. Also, your laptop should recognize the CF card, no matter the size.

Your single floppy disk might also be broken after all this time (my old, basement-stored disks have a failure rate of ca. 80%), or there could simply be an issue with your floppy drive (head alignment).

You also don't strictly need the floppy drive in order to format, as you can just make a small, bootable partition on your cf card and put the win98 version of F-Disk on there and format that way.

Ok, so from my experience with CF card shenanigans on older computers that will not properly detect the drive settings from the BIOS.. you will need to hook it up to a newer computer, go into the BIOS and have it autodetect the settings for that drive.

Write those settings down. I used a sticker I put on the CF card and wrote the settings there.

Then I hooked it back up to the old computer.. a 486 based machine, manually entered the settings in the BIOS and it worked.

Partitioning and formatting will not work and/or cause files to become corrupted all the time if the drive parameters are not set properly.

I've got 4 CF cards of the same size from the same company and they all have different drive parameters.

ultranothing wrote:

...This old girl has SystemSoft BIOS for (and I'm just doing this from memory because I'm in a different room) VIPER 557/558 version 07.32 and a brief excursion in the BIOS menu did confirm that it recognizes the CF drive - well, 8gb of it.

The problem is here. Your computer's BIOS is not ok for HDDs larger than 8GB. This is normal for not so new 486 and early Pentium boards. It cannot properly detect your 16GB CF card.

BIOS update, DDO software or using a CF card smaller than 8GB are the only options you have.

ultranothing wrote:

What else, what else...I've tried to plug the CF card back in after DOS loads but FDISK can't see it...

You cannot do that. This is not a CF card and your adapter is not a CF card reader anymore. They are IDE devices according to your computer. They should be detected properly before booting into MS-DOS. IDE devices are normally not hot plug.

ultranothing wrote:

I brought the CF card (which now has the DOS partition, allegedly) to the new computer and I'm being told that the disk is not readable and needs to be formatted. Assumedly because it's a DOS partition and W10 can't recognize it. So it's basically one step forward, two steps back.

No, it is a corrupted partition in an IDE device which is not properly detected and supported by your old computer. Windows 10 (or any other Windows for that matter) has no problem reading DOS/FAT16 partitions.

I do like this:
1. Connect the CF card to the IDE/CF adapter
2. In BIOS parameters: Drive type 47 , other for 8GB (see MB manual) from eg
https://www.acceed.com/manuals/DOM%20Manual.pdf and or http://www.farnell.com/datasheets/1683451.pdf
3. then FDisk, eg for 8GB - I make one Primary partition = 97% of 2GB (2GB=2 x 1024kB=2x 1024 x 1024 bytes), Extended Partition rest and 3 Logical inside this same size like Primary
4. Format C: , next respectively D E F
5. Move the system from Floppy or other PC using Sys command, See this command carefully (SYS [drive1:][path] drive2: or simple sys c:)
6. Move Command.com to new c:
7. Now you can start system from C drive, and check C D E F using basic DOS commands
8. On another computer, copy the Windows 98 installation files to the new eg Win98 folder-directory.
9. Now you can install Windows from drive D

If there are any problems, you can do this on another PC (1-8) using the same parameters from the point 2

Ah, jesus. Every time I try a different solution I'm met with a different problem.

Got a box of "new" floppy disks to eliminate the possibility that the one disk was corrupt.

Newest issue is that no floppy boot disk (DOS or WIN98) will boot when the IDE drive is plugged in. Except for the few times that it did work, which was after the computer sat for a while. Or...however it happened to work. Seems it was after I gave up and came back to it at a later time it seemed to be more cooperative.

I'm on an A: prompt now with a WIN98 boot disk. I really wish I could access this drive. I'm AT a LOSS!

ultranothing wrote:

Ah, jesus. Every time I try a different solution I'm met with a different problem. […]
Show full quote

Ah, jesus. Every time I try a different solution I'm met with a different problem.

Got a box of "new" floppy disks to eliminate the possibility that the one disk was corrupt.

Newest issue is that no floppy boot disk (DOS or WIN98) will boot when the IDE drive is plugged in. Except for the few times that it did work, which was after the computer sat for a while. Or...however it happened to work. Seems it was after I gave up and came back to it at a later time it seemed to be more cooperative.

I'm on an A: prompt now with a WIN98 boot disk. I really wish I could access this drive. I'm AT a LOSS!

I already said that, in a system with a BIOS which have a 8GB size limit, an 16GB CF card (or any HDD larger than 8GB for that matter) W I L L - N O T - W O R K ! .

"BIOS update, DDO software or using a CF card smaller than 8GB are the only options you have."

Let's say, there is no BIOS update available, and using a DDO utility like Ontrack is too much hassle, ... but how hard could it be to get a 8GB (or smaller) CF card? 🤣

tayyare wrote:

I already said that, in a system with a BIOS which have a 8GB size limit, an 16GB CF card (or any HDD larger than 8GB for that matter) W I L L - N O T - W O R K !

The OP says in his very first post that the BIOS recognizes the card as a 8 GB disk.

I'm using way bigger cards in systems with a even lower ceiling... maybe not a economical solution, strictly speaking, but it definitely works.

henryVK wrote:

The OP says in his very first post that the BIOS recognizes the card as a 8 GB disk.

This practically means it did not recognize it.

henryVK wrote:

I'm using way bigger cards in systems with a even lower ceiling... maybe not a economical solution, strictly speaking, but it definitely works.

It works when it works I guess, and most probably it will not work what ever he does if it didn't work in the first place. In my experience it's almost never worked (except getting help from Seatools or Ontrack). All I'm saying is getting a 8GB or less card is such an easy way to see if this is the problem. 😊

tayyare wrote:

It works when it works I guess, and most probably it will not work what ever he does if it didn't work in the first place. In my experience it's almost never worked (except getting help from Seatools or Ontrack). All I'm saying is getting a 8GB or less card is such an easy way to see if this is the problem. 😊

Now I wish I had the time to test this on my couple of laptops!

But, yeah, if possible, OP should test a smaller CF card to eliminate that possibility.

OP, maybe you could try making a bootable partition with DiskPart and just copy the win98 boot disk to it.

https://www.techwalla.com/articles/how-to-mak … e-with-diskpart

Haven't done this myself, but if you can get a partition working that way you would be set.

So the CF card will not work because it is 16gb, even though there might be only one partition on it which is 8gb, or 4, or 2? Just by virtue of being too big, it might be the problem?

I mean yeah. I could get a smaller CF but I'm already under threat of sleeping on the couch for all these other purchases 😀

I have been able to complete the herculean task of booting into DOS with simultaneous access to the C:. I did this with FreeDOS. FreeDOS won't let format a DOS partition (error 55...volume is locked?) but it SEES the CF card and let's me go to DOS.

So I put WIN98 install files on the CF card freshly formatted with a 2gb FAT32 partition with the Win10 PC. booted with FreeDOS, exited to DOS prompt, went to C: and holy $@&t, no files found. Really? The closer I get, the further away.

I will try Henry's suggestion and report back my inevitable failure 😒 I also have a PCMCIA CD-ROM coming in today so that's another Avenue. Thanks fellers.

Wow. It's just one thing after the next. I am unable, after several attempts, to boot Win98 from the newly-arrived external PCMCIA CD-ROM. It spins up and there seems to be some activity and then everything just hangs.

I have tried about 47 times to create an OnTrack Disk Manager 9.57 ISO with my new PC using the external USB floppy drive with the OnTrack 9.57 bootdisk creation EXE found on www.philscomputerlab.com but it keeps telling me that the "diskette write-protect tab must be closed" which it totally is and I've tried making the bootdisk with several different floppies to ensure that it's not an issue with the physical media.

I then found a disk image of ver. 9.43 at winworldpc.com, extracted it and copied the files over to the floppy, but when I try to boot the old computer with that disk I'm told that it's a non-system disk or disk error. Of course.

The USB floppy drive works fine. Copies files to and from. Formats. Has seemingly no problems. Quick format. Regular format. The diskette tab is closed. OnTrack doesn't believe it.

Regarding henryVK's suggestion: I just followed the guide and made the partition active with diskpart. Now, I should extract a Win98 bootdisk image to that partition? Or should I extract a full Win98 bootable CD ISO to that partition? Or...should I create a second partition with the full WIN98 extracted files and put a WIN98 boot floppy into the primary, active partition?

I'm just confused because if I just have a floppy disk image in the bootable partition I still have no actual WIN98 to install...

Okay, so another problem:

I have the partition set to active. I am trying to extract the ISO of WIN98 retail to the partition, and I'm getting error 0x08007045D: The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error.

..."Try again" seemed to work.

Okay! Files are being copied. Let's see if this does anything...