jaevans wrote:

Installing Windows 95 from my own set of floppies works, but.... 1) as someone mentioned before, the Quickrestore CD from archive.org is bad so I can't use it to restore to factory. It would be nice to boot a CD to install a Linux distro but that I haven't figured out yet. That is why I was hoping there was a keystroke or sequence to get into the BIOS, but not this 9232. 2) one post mentions boot floppy images available online but I've not located those. Perhaps they have since vanished.

Thanks much to all,
john

I have a good copy of the QuickRestore CD. I also have the floppy images for the BIOS/SoftPaq setup. I will upload it to archive.org this weekend if I have time.

Update- the CD-ROM drive was acting flakey so I replaced it with a spare I had. Now I was able to create a bootdisk from the quickrestore cd (so the image seems to be fine and not corrupted). However, quickrestore requires a serial number on the computer and that had been removed or had fallen off the rear of the computer.

Does anyone know of a utility to retrieve the serial number?

John

I tried a couple of utilities that pulled something like a serial number but showed up as username - that didn't work for locating the serial number so either 1) I need a better utility or 2) there is no serial number in the hardware and the software is just looking for a match to an internal database or calculated value. Will do more research tomorrow.

john

wiretap wrote:

I have a good copy of the QuickRestore CD. I also have the floppy images for the BIOS/SoftPaq setup. I will upload it to archive.org this weekend if I have time.

Thanks much but I think the image on archive.org as well as the softpaq floppy I have are good. I am still digging to figure out the device's serial number.

john

jaevans wrote:

Thanks much but I think the image on archive.org as well as the softpaq floppy I have are good. I am still digging to figure out the device's serial number.

john

Of serial numbers, traderjoel have put good instruction at BetaArchive: https://www.betaarchive.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=29727
This would work for QuickRestore of Presario CDS and 5500/9500 series, but not 5200/9200/9600 because DB files are bit different and I can't read most of them with Paradox dbase Reader.

I was able to move forward a little. I was unable to locate the serial number on my 9232 but did find one that someone posted online and that enabled the QuickRestore install. However since I had a 2gb drive installed the program puked on not being able to create such a large FAT partition and this trashed my existing win98 install. I may give up at this point unless I can find a 1.2gb drive in my stash. Hopefully it will work with a smaller drive than 1.2 go.

John

Can't you preformat a partition or create a new volume? I used a 4GB CF card with my Presario 9232. You can also use a dynamic drive overlay software like Ontrack to create a drive with a specific size.

SUCCESS - actually, I was able to use a CF card partitioned and then use the quickrestore CD to get a factory fresh install, but ugghhh, what a mess of bloatware. I mainly wanted to see if I could get it to factory so after I discovered I could, I reformatted the drive, removed the Modem hardware, installed a multi-port USB card, and installed win98, along with an updated set of USB drivers for the Belkin card. Now the machine has a 4GB C: drive, 72 MB of ram, and 4 external USB ports. BTW, I can't recall if I mentioned it but I had to replace the CD drive - the original was just too unreliable/inconsistent.

So, I am done with this project, unless I find a use for the machine in my workshop.

Thanks to all for your help. It's been a fun little exercise.

John - Colorado Springs, CO

Glad to hear you got it working. 😀

The disk was in very rough shape when I made an image of it. I sent it away with the PC when I sold it.