erase hd,REINSTALL WINDOWS

[cubs99]

question for a green one

i want to erase a hard drive on an old computer, than reinstall windows95. i do not have any floppies or a cd. i don't think i have enough resources to install xp or win98. so win95 it is.
is that possible?
what are the steps involved?
will i need to download anything before i begin?

thanks in advance
cubs99

[Bill in SD, CA]

Welcome to TechIMO!!

Originally posted by cubs99
i do not have any floppies or a cd.

HUGE problem!!

That being said, you are going to need the Win95 CD, a bootdisk floppy, and a product license key.

The key is in your registry BTW and I don't know if the programs that will display it for you work in 95 anymore.

What, if I may ask, might you be going to use this machine for?

And, what are the specs of the system?

Bill

[cubs99]

just an older computer.. i want to delete ALL info on the drive and reinstall windows and perhaps keep it as a back up or donate.

packard bell
233 pentium
32 mg ram
5.1 gb hd
24x cd rom

not much these days

thanks cubs99

[patrish]

Win98 will work on that system okay. Hardest part will be finding the drivers for the PB proprietary hardware.

You might try a good "uninstall programs", tempfiles and registry clean, then search and destroy personal .doc, .jpg, .mp3, etc. files if you aren't prepared to locate the drivers.

[Dj-Icer]

Win98 is just okay. 5.1 gb hd is still big. You erase hd as for format C:, correct? then go for it

The minimum requirements for installing XP is 128 RAM, recommended better than Pentium II processor.

[cubs99]

i have a windows 98 cd rom from the computer i am using now.
can i use that to load windows on the old computer?

what would be the steps to erase the old hard drive and install win 98? i am pretty green at this.

thanks
cubs99

[Bovon]

You will need a boot disk and add format.com to it and also fdisk...You will need to fdisk the drive and change the FAT (File Allocation Table) from FAT 16 to FAT 32 for Win98... we can "talk" you thru doing fdisk..and there are several moves once you start fdisk running, but its not difficult.

Go here to download a bootdisk file.
http://www.bootdisk.com/

In this case, I would choose the first one at the top "DOS - Windows 9X/Me/NT/2K/XP Excellent Bootdisks "..then on the next page, download this one: Windows 98 SE Custom, No Ramdrive. When you get this file downloaded, you will place a formatted blank diskette in your A: drive and run the file..it will automatically extract itself onto the floppy disk..and you will have a bootable diskette with format.com and fdisk.exe already there..plus other good utilities

Now, go here and read about doing an fdisk.
http://www.computerhope.com/fdiskhlp.htm

Once you have read a little and made your boot disk..you will be better able to ask and understand the questions and answers.

[mksoccer]

Originally posted by Dj-Icer
Win98 is just okay. 5.1 gb hd is still big. You erase hd as for format C:, correct? then go for it

The minimum requirements for installing XP is 128 RAM, recommended better than Pentium II processor.

The minimum requirements for XP are 64 MB of RAM and a 300 Mhz processor. The recommended hardware is 128 MB and 500 Mhz. Personally, I think anything less than 256 MB/ 700 Mhz is going to be slow.