INSTALL 98 ON HP PAVILION ZE LAPTOP

[magus1ghz]

I wanted to take XP Home off my laptop that is ZE 4400 laptop, and replace it with 98. Every time it gets to 16 min left it blue screens when doing the driver data base. So my install locks up at that point and I have to reboot. Would like to know if any one here has any answers.

Thank you

[John Prophet]

Welcome to the forum!

How EXACTLY are you going about it? Fill us in on the details. Did you format first?...did you repartition using fdisk or anything like that?

I would guess that probably you need to get a W98se boot disk and run fdisk and delete the non-dos partition. Then create a dos partition.

You probably have an ntfs partition on there now...so when you run fdisk off the floppy it will show up as a "non-dos" partition"..so you delete that, create a "primary dos" partition. Then format it.

THEN install W98.

JP

[magus1ghz]

Ok from the start I fdisk my hard drive and deleted all partitions and created a new using my full 20 gig. I formated of course and then start my install of Win 98. This is where the problem starts when you are at the 15 minute mark where win 98 starts the driver base installation it blue screens. Then when you press the keyboard to get out of the blue screen you find that the installation has locked up.

[John Prophet]

hmmm, maybe the cd is scratched? Did you try to just power it off and restart it at that point?

Possibly you could try to make a "win98" folder on the hard drive and go into the win98 folder on the cd and just do a "copy *.*" to put the install files onto the hard drive to try to install from there as opposed to from the cd.

[magus1ghz]

I have used multiple CD's with 98 all of which are new. Trying to create an image to see if that would help but seems to me that and I know this will sound strange but would it be that HP has a code in the board to stop backward installs of OS?

[John Prophet]

Doesnt seem like it. Have you tried the hp site to see if they have a faq? Is there anything in bios about what OS you are running??

Dunno man, kind of a tuff one. Ho wol dis the laptop, isnt that a new model?? Is it still under warranty? lol, maybe a call to HP tech support if its free.


Hmm, I wonder if it could be a bad place on the hard drive??

For the heck of it, can you put scandisk on a floppy and run a thorough surface scan??

[magus1ghz]

Already have and no errors. will not even install 2000 but xp with or with out the hp disk starts up well. STRANGER AND STRANGER

[John Prophet]

ahhh. I think you are correct then...about the bios being specific somehow.

BTW..whats wrong with XP home?

[magus1ghz]

not so much the XP home just bad laptop I wanted to save money so by not buying IBM thinkpads as I always had done in the past well decided to buy YEAH hp. LOL.