BleepingComputer.com: Win 98 Startup Problem

A friend of mine gave me his computer because he couldn't get it to work. It is a Pionex. It states on the sticker it has a Pintium 2 and has windows 98. When I turn it on it runs through dos and checks everything but then it does not go into windows. It stays in dos. How can I get it to go into windows 98?

Did your friend erase the hard drive? Your computer isn't seeing the hard drive for what ever reason. Do you have a Win 98 CD? When it stays in DOS what does it say?
Mark

As far as he knows he didn't. When I turn it on it goes through the normal dos and bios startup then instead of going into windows it stops. The last thing that shows is Windows 98, then the copyright, then C:\>.
I tried fdisk and it stated that was bad command.

Well you could try hooking the drive up as a slave in another computer and see if there are any files on the drive. When you said you tried FDISK was that after it showed the Windows logo and then the C prompt? That won't work. You need a bootdisk. Here's a good guide. Then reinstall 98
Mark

Hello garmanma,

I will take the drive out and try it in mine as a slave and see what it has. I tried a dos prompt to see what I would get.

I tried: dir
I got back: Command Com 93.880 5-11-98
1 file 93.880 bytes
0 dirs 11,480.14 MB Free

I then tried: dir \test
I got back: Volume in drive C is drive
Volume Serial Number is 2A52+1F04
Directory of C:\
File not found
I also wanted to add: It states to hit del to go into setup but when I do it prompts for a password. I asked him about it and he doesn't know anything about it. He doesn't really know too much about computers at all.
11,480.14 MB Free

I don't have a boot disk but I do have the Win 98 CD. I also have Win XP Pro. I just don't know how to get the disk to load without a floppy disk. Any help would be appreciated.

This post has been edited by dumafach: 18 April 2007 - 10:16 PM

To bypass the BIOS password, remove the mobo battery for a while. If it's old , buy a new one while it's out. Remember to reset the date and time. They're a couple of bucks. Floppy drives are cheap to buy, that's one option. If you have USB you can boot from a flash drive. You can also burn a boot program to a CD. That is, provided your BIOS supports those options
Mark

This post has been edited by garmanma: 19 April 2007 - 07:46 AM

Hello garmanma,

He finally remembered the password. I got into the setup and set the clock. It does act as if it can't find the OS. It does show the hard drive as a bigfoot 20 GB. What do I need to reinstall Win 98 or XP Pro?

I'm just guessing here because you said Pentium II and Win 98, that it's fairly old. You might not be able to run XP. MS says you can run XP with 256MB memory, but most agree 512 is a better minimum amount. I don't know what you have. If you have the computer model # I could make a better guess. Providing you have the 98 CD, FDISK and reformat and install using the links I posted earlier.
Mark

If you have a P-II you should consider Windows 2000 Pro. It is at least as stable as XP (IMO more so) and uses far less resources. I have an internet workstation with a P-II 266Mhz with 192MB of RAM that putts a long just fine. I have replace XP Home on several of my P-III 500Mhz computers with W2k and am glad i did. It gave me a noticable performance increase. The also have 512MB of RAM.
The only bad thing is W2k is far more expensive than XP home. I paid $125 for my copies. You can expect to pay $60 to $90 for the upgrade version.
What make and model computer do you have. P-II 450Mhz CPUs are going for a little as $10 on ebay.

There's always Linux. I put Debian on an old box and I'm playing around with it. If I can learn it anyone can
Mark

I finally got into bios and set it up to run from cd. I was able to install xp pro. I didn't know if it would be able to run it either. I was told by my friend that he just wants to use the computer to run a plasma cutter in his home workshop. I told him xp might be a little overkill. He said if it doesn't work we can go back to win 98. I figure that is what I will probably have to do sooner or later, but for now I gave him what he wanted. It does only have 192 MB of ram. I will just have to wait and see. Since he wont be online with it I guess he doesn't have to worry about all the updates and security. I checked the system page and it doesn't show the speed, all it says is x86 family 6 model 5 stepping 2. Thanks for any advice.

Roger

Try using Everest v1.51

I think you can get XPlite on the net somewhere. It will size down that XP install and should be able to run it on older spec machines.

A little bit from their sales page:

Quote

Unfortunately it is not freeware though, but you can get a trial.

http://www.litepc.com/xplite.html