My computer is giving me more grief than I deserve

[Urban Ranger]

It's 486 10 years ago.

[Dr. A. Cula]

The win98 boot floppy will only help you format the hard disk or (if you have stuff in there you want to keep) delete the c:\windows and "c:\program files" directories. The latter will probably look like c:\progra~1 when you boot from a floppy. Booting with cd-rom drivers will not help you much, as the setup programs for win2k and xp will not run in dos mode. Try cleaning these 2 directories first, then you MUST boot from the win2k cd, it's the only way to install it. If you have a copy of the disk, it must be a bootable disk with the original boot menu. Anything else is worthless.

An alternative would be to re-install win98/ME, then try running the win2k setup from win98/ME, but I can't promise it will work. From what you're saying, I think the win2k setup is trying to use the old winME registry and it's getting some stuff that doesn't agree with it.

[Dr. A. Cula]

Oh, and the ideea of installing win2k on a P166 is not very bright. I had problems installing win98 on such a system.
How much memory/hard disk space do you have?

[Ozz]

Originally posted by Paul Hanson
Is there something you do to a disk to make it bootable that I'm not aware of?

It has to be formatted with the system option, windows
or
format a:/s
in dos

The files it needs to boot are
IO.SYS
BIOS.SYS
COMMAND.COM

The first two are hidden.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Build yourself new Athlon 1700+ with 256 MB ram + new R9000 GFX for 200£ some spare parts from the old PC like cd rom and floppy

1700+ - £40
256 MB £30
GFX above- £55
(ig you can spare 15£ more buy crucial Radeon 8500LE)
35£ ECS sis 735 atx mobo with sound
40£ 20GB generic HDD

all your probs solved for sure

[Paul Hanson]

It's OK everyone, I've sorted it. Remembering that I had another hard drive in my computer helped a lot in the end.

[Panag]

Re: My computer is giving me more grief than I deserve

Originally posted by Paul Hanson
The other day, i decided to install Windows 2000 on my PC, to replace Windows Me, which I was starting to get a tad fed up of. I "borrowed" my a Windows 2000 CD off one of my housemates and began to install. Everything was fine until I rebooted it. Whilst it was booting up, it went to a blue screen (I was rather hoping I'd seen the last of these), complaining that it couldn't find a specific registry setting, or something like that. I proceeded to dump the disk to memory, or vice versa, and rebooted. And did the same thing again. The MS knowledge base tells me I have to reinstall Windows as something has been corrupted. Fair enough.

I figured that the way to sort this out was to put together the Windows 2000 startup disks. With the aid of the computer of another of my housemates (the same one I'm using right now, infact), I managed to do this. I booted from the first disk, putting each one in in turn. Eventually, it began to boot into Windows. Here we go, I thought.

Not a chance.

Now it's complaining of a "kernel error", or something similar (I forget what exactly, and I left the piece of paper I wrote it on in my room). It refuses to boot.

All I want to do is boot into DOS with CD-ROM support so I can reinstall Windows. How the hell can I do this?

hi ,

the best an fastest option is to buy a MAC , there are huge discounts and you are sure you never again are running into something like this , ........

have a nice MAC day

[Richelieu]

Originally posted by Paul Hanson
It's OK everyone, I've sorted it. Remembering that I had another hard drive in my computer helped a lot in the end.

[reds4ever]

Originally posted by OneFootInTheGrave
Build yourself new Athlon 1700+ with 256 MB ram + new R9000 GFX for 200£ some spare parts from the old PC like cd rom and floppy

1700+ - £40
256 MB £30
GFX above- £55
(ig you can spare 15£ more buy crucial Radeon 8500LE)
35£ ECS sis 735 atx mobo with sound
40£ 20GB generic HDD

all your probs solved for sure

he'll still need a new case, mouse and keyboard, i doubt any of the old stuff will work

[Paul Hanson]

The whole point is pretty moot, since I'm a student and don't have £200 lying around for a new computer.

Well, I could, but the university would be well within their legal rights to chuck me out of my accomodation if I changed my spending plans.

[Panag]

Originally posted by Paul Hanson
The whole point is pretty moot, since I'm a student and don't have £200 lying around for a new computer.

Well, I could, but the university would be well within their legal rights to chuck me out of my accomodation if I changed my spending plans.

hi ,

lease or rent one , ....

have a nice day