Installing OS without a CD drive

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell (More info?)

Any ideas how to install Windows 95 or 98 on a Dell laptop that has no CD
drive? I've a legitimate 98SE install CD. The system has 95 now, but it's
corrupted.
All ideas greatly appreciated.

 

[Tony]

Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell (More info?)

You can buy 95 or 98 on floppy, check Loot in the UK, borrow or buy an
external CD drive and just plug it in.


"Mat" <bob.mathewson@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
news:RRwzc.17191$Di3.12016@bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...
> Any ideas how to install Windows 95 or 98 on a Dell laptop that has no CD
> drive? I've a legitimate 98SE install CD. The system has 95 now, but
it's
> corrupted.
> All ideas greatly appreciated.
>
>

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell (More info?)

Bob,

This one is an interesting challenge. I have to discourage installing from a
floppy, even if you could find one somewhere. Long ago, a client of mine
attempted to install Windows 95 from floppy, and ended up with his system all
hosed up when the 20th floppy was bad. Any Windows on floppy has been on the
shelf for a long time now, and the magnetic media are likely to have gone bad.
Still, if you can get a WIndows 98 floppy set for cheap, it may be worth the
try. Agonizingly slow.

You're far better off getting an external CD-ROM drive compatible with whatever
external connectors are on your computer. The choices might be USB, PCMCIA, and
parallel port. An old Backpacker brand parallel port CD-ROM drive would work,
but the speed would not be as fast as a slug, but better than floppys.

My best guess is that a PCMCIA (aka PC Card) external CD-ROM drive would work
the best. PCMCIA offers a couple of possibilities. There are PCMCIA cards
which provide a fairly direct interface to a CD-ROM drive, most often a SCSI
CD-ROM drive. If your notebook has a USB port, a USB external CD-ROM drive
would do it.

Another possibility might be a docking station for your model of notebook.
Docking stations often have drive bays for installation of hard drives and/or
CD-ROM drives and/or ZIP drives. I used a docking station to install Win 98 on
an old IBM Thinkpad I have here.

Here are a couple of more possibilities:

The entire Windows 98SE takes up more than 100MB and less than 250MB, so if the
CD could be copied onto a 250MB ZIP cartridge on another system, you could
install from a ZIP drive.

Likewise, either PCMCIA flash cards or Compact Flash cards with a capacity of
250MB or more are readily available. Once again, copy the contents of the
Windows 98 CD to the flash card, then install. Compact Flash cards need an
inexpensive adapter to be used in a PCMCIA slot.

The biggest challenge for any of these alternatives is to come up with a boot
floppy containing the drivers to recognize any of these devices in DOS-mode.
Yes, there are some USB DOS-mode drivers floating around.

I hope this helps... Ben Myers

On Tue, 15 Jun 2004 06:40:49 GMT, "Mat" <bob.mathewson@worldnet.att.net> wrote:

>Any ideas how to install Windows 95 or 98 on a Dell laptop that has no CD
>drive? I've a legitimate 98SE install CD. The system has 95 now, but it's
>corrupted.
>All ideas greatly appreciated.
>
>

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell (More info?)

>The biggest challenge for any of these alternatives is to come up with a boot
>floppy containing the drivers to recognize any of these devices in DOS-mode.
>Yes, there are some USB DOS-mode drivers floating around.
>
>I hope this helps... Ben Myers

There is another alternative if the person has access to MS-DOS 6 or a
similar utility and a cable (serial or parallel) designed to connect
to computers. There was that utility that came with MS-DOS
INTERSVR.EXE and INTERLNK.EXE. I can't remember what runs on what
machine, but I have used it before to transfer files from Win98 to a
DOS machine

You know what to do: shdb at slip dot net

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell (More info?)

On Tue, 15 Jun 2004 22:09:36 GMT, See signature below
<fake_address@hotmail.com> wrote:

>
>>The biggest challenge for any of these alternatives is to come up with a boot
>>floppy containing the drivers to recognize any of these devices in DOS-mode.
>>Yes, there are some USB DOS-mode drivers floating around.
>>
>>I hope this helps... Ben Myers
>
>There is another alternative if the person has access to MS-DOS 6 or a
>similar utility and a cable (serial or parallel) designed to connect
>to computers. There was that utility that came with MS-DOS
>INTERSVR.EXE and INTERLNK.EXE. I can't remember what runs on what
>machine, but I have used it before to transfer files from Win98 to a
>DOS machine
>
>You know what to do: shdb at slip dot net

One other note. I do remember when I first did this, I think I had my
BIOS to assign the recourses to the parallel port automatically. When
I tried this in a DOS boot on my Dell, it didn't work. So make sure
the resources for the port used are assigned by BIOS

You know what to do: shdb at slip dot net

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell (More info?)

On Tue, 15 Jun 2004 06:40:49 +0000, Mat sez:
> Any ideas how to install Windows 95 or 98 on a Dell laptop that has no CD
> drive? I've a legitimate 98SE install CD. The system has 95 now, but
> it's corrupted.
> All ideas greatly appreciated.

Forget floppies, as the previous reply pointed out you can get into a
world of hurt if you get {n} disks into the install and end up with a bad
disk.

I like to get the entire install CD onto the hard drive - even when I do
have a CDROM - and run it from (for example) C:\INSTALL\WIN98 to ensure
there are no further delays or errors relying on removable media. Of
course in your case, the problem is how to get from A to B (or, I guess,
E: to C

How about Laplink or PC-Anywhere? You could transfer the files across
parallel cable or Ethernet from a CD-enabled desktop quickly enough...
come to think of it I've done that a few times myself in years past.

As a hardware tinkerer, I wouldn't have any problem opening up the innards
and hooking up a secondary IDE drive to copy the install files over to the
"real" C: drive, but a smart person wouldn't take that route. "Void The
Warranty" is my motto!

--
Peter B. Steiger
Cheyenne, WY
If you must reply by email, you can reach me by placing zeroes
where you see stars: wypbs_**3 at bornagain.com.