I have an old PC that was originally set up with Windows 95. I want to resuscitate it and give it to the children for Christmas. I’ve ordered a new copy of Windows 98 SE to put on it. I have the original recovery, etc. CD’s that came with the computer, but as I said, I want to replace the original OS with Windows 98 SE. I don’t want to save anything that’s on the computer now. I just want to wipe it clean and set it up fresh.
If win98 comes with a setup floppy disk, you can do this:
Format a blank floppy disk for booting. you can do this by going to the MS DOS window and typing “format a:” When it’s done, type “sys a:” type “exit” to return to windows.
Look at the drive and see if it has format.com on it. if it doesn’t, find it and copy it to the floppy. You can usually find it at C:\windows\command (or is that c:\windows\system\command? It’s been a while) but if it’s not there, use the windows search feature to find it.
put that floppy in the drive, reboot, and when you get the DOS prompt type “format c:” Be sure you don’t want anything on the hard drive, because this will wipe it out.
When format is done, take the boot floppy out, put in the setup floppy, put in the win98 cd in the cd drive and reboot. Windows should take it from there.
Packaging: Retail Media w/Microsoft Product Key. Box and Manual are not included
This version of Windows 98 SE will perform a Clean install on a new hard drive/Formatted drive. Not to be used as an upgrade.
Unless there’s something in this description that provides a clue, I’ll have either email the seller or wait until it arrives to find out if it comes with a boot floppy disc.
You might be able to set the boot sequence to boot from a CD, and then you don’t need to worry about floppies at all.
If you know how to get to your start up utility (aka CMOS, aka BIOS), you can look for an entry called “boot sequence”. Possible values will be something like A:, C:, or D:.
It probably says something like A:;C:
A is probably your floppy, and C: is of course your hard drive. D: is the commonest letter for your CD drive.
Switch from A:;C: to D:;C:. THis means that upon bootup, the computer will first look at the CD drive, and then boot from whatever’s on your hard drive.
If you do that, you can then stick the windows CD in the drawer, hit the power stwich, and windows will take it from there.
Save changes and exit.
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To get to the start up utility, try booting the computer while holding do the delete button, or one of the function keys–it’ll probably tell you on the screen almost the first thing after you start boting what you have to do to get in.
