Can’t reinstall Win98

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My wife’s computer, an older model with a partitioned 8G HD (2 gigs per) and 32Meg of RAM ran fine for her e-mail until I loaded Norton Antivirus (no antivirus before this.) Somehow during the NAV installation the Master Boot Record got changed. When a re-boot up indicated “no system disk,” I reformatted and reinstalled the system files on C:/. The computer will now boot up to the C drive, but I am having problems reinstalling Win98.

I boot up with the floppy boot disk and enable the CD ROM correctly (option 1) and can see the Win98 CD correctly in the CD drive. I run “setup” from the CD and the setup program starts correctly. It indicates no errors with the virtual drives. When the “Continue” button is clicked on to actually start the Win98 program install, the hard drive goes into an endless “search” loop (it sounds like its searching.) That’s as far as I can get. Any ideas?

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Is there any message on the screen when you click ‘continue’? How long have you let it run before giving up and turning off/restarting the computer?

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Is there any message on the screen when you click ‘continue’? How long have you let it run before giving up and turning off/restarting the computer?

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It’s been awhile since I’ve installed Win98 but I wonder if your Win98 CD is bootable. Have you tried changing the BIOS (if necessary) to boot from the CD and trying that route, rather than booting from a floppy?

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It’s been awhile since I’ve installed Win98 but I wonder if your Win98 CD is bootable. Have you tried changing the BIOS (if necessary) to boot from the CD and trying that route, rather than booting from a floppy?

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“Is there any message on the screen when you click ‘continue’? ”
No, it just starts as if it is loading the OS, but the HD heads start cycling like they are seeking something and cannot find it.

“How long have you let it run before giving up and turning off/restarting the computer?”
I tried it three times with the longest time approximately 12 minutes.

“It’s been awhile since I’ve installed Win98 but I wonder if your Win98 CD is bootable. Have you tried changing the BIOS (if necessary) to boot from the CD and trying that route, rather than booting from a floppy?”
It’s an older machine that will not boot up from the CD drive. There is no option in BIOS that will allow a CD boot-up; it’s either C: or A:.

I’m going to try using FDISK / MBR tonight. I’ll let you know the results later. Thanks guys.

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Update …

Well the problem has been solved. Not only was the Master Boot Record altered, but somehow I also lost the primary partition. When the DOS primary partition is gone and you try to use drive C, for example by loading an operating system, the system goes into an endless “search” loop. Anyway with another FDISK and reestablishing the DOS primary partition, Win98 S/E loaded with no more problems. Something I forgot about with 98 S/E is the problem with shutting down. Had to go into the MS site and download the fix. Thanks for all your help.

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Well, I’m glad you got it fixed. And for the benefit of future Loungers searching this forum, if MS ever removes that shutdown patch from their web, I keep a copy of it on hand just in case. I could always put it on my web pages if someone needed it in the future. I think Win98 will be around for quite some time.

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Perhaps you might keep the multiple shutdown patches.. I have downloaded three different ones which I have renamed to help ID them: 98 se shutdown fix August 99 239887 up.exe, 98 se shutdown fix November 99 4756US8.EXE and 98 se shutdown map 260067USA8.EXE

The last one is for people that have mapped drives in a networked environment and either travel away from the network or work from home, etc.

-Jester

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Perhaps you might keep the multiple shutdown patches.. I have downloaded three different ones which I have renamed to help ID them: 98 se shutdown fix August 99 239887 up.exe, 98 se shutdown fix November 99 4756US8.EXE and 98 se shutdown map 260067USA8.EXE

The last one is for people that have mapped drives in a networked environment and either travel away from the network or work from home, etc.

-Jester

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Well, I’m glad you got it fixed. And for the benefit of future Loungers searching this forum, if MS ever removes that shutdown patch from their web, I keep a copy of it on hand just in case. I could always put it on my web pages if someone needed it in the future. I think Win98 will be around for quite some time.

Reply | Quote

Update …

Well the problem has been solved. Not only was the Master Boot Record altered, but somehow I also lost the primary partition. When the DOS primary partition is gone and you try to use drive C, for example by loading an operating system, the system goes into an endless “search” loop. Anyway with another FDISK and reestablishing the DOS primary partition, Win98 S/E loaded with no more problems. Something I forgot about with 98 S/E is the problem with shutting down. Had to go into the MS site and download the fix. Thanks for all your help.

Reply | Quote

“Is there any message on the screen when you click ‘continue’? ”
No, it just starts as if it is loading the OS, but the HD heads start cycling like they are seeking something and cannot find it.

“How long have you let it run before giving up and turning off/restarting the computer?”
I tried it three times with the longest time approximately 12 minutes.

“It’s been awhile since I’ve installed Win98 but I wonder if your Win98 CD is bootable. Have you tried changing the BIOS (if necessary) to boot from the CD and trying that route, rather than booting from a floppy?”
It’s an older machine that will not boot up from the CD drive. There is no option in BIOS that will allow a CD boot-up; it’s either C: or A:.

I’m going to try using FDISK / MBR tonight. I’ll let you know the results later. Thanks guys.

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