packard bell won;t boot w/ Win95 boot disk? [Archive]

FijiJohn

08-10-2002, 02:55 AM

When I try to boot the Packard Bell 486 with my trusty Win95 boot disk,it says "compression driver cannot be loaded - ask your vendor for the right version". I'd like to install Win95 on this turkey. Right now all it has is DOS. Suggestions?

(It also seem to have the AntiExe virus on it and infect any floppies I put in the drive.)

TheBold

08-10-2002, 03:12 AM

first attempt ...start up your pc using NAV rescue disk..

and make sure that it removes the virus..

or u can just reformat the HD.

rangeral

08-10-2002, 02:44 PM

Write protect the floppy, if you only have one window on the corner of the floppy showing you need to slide the tab on other side so both windows are showing so the virus can't write to the floppy.

FijiJohn

08-10-2002, 04:23 PM

Thanks for the suggestions. I tried another approach and removed the drive,stuck it in another box and formatted it that way. Then I tried to use my trusty external (parallel port) HD with Win95 on it but I get strange intermittent problems (stack overflow, unexpected interrupts) and often it will not even POST. I think it's not worth beating any more as it is beginning to resemble a dead horse.

rmanet

08-11-2002, 10:02 AM

no reason you can't get the HDD to work - did you format the drive in the one machine than just copy over the system or did you do a clean install? You could strip the other machine down to just the video card and no other peripherals, install w95 (display vga adapter), on the HDD, then put it in the PB and try again.

The drive is probably small, but sometimes with old systems (usually give 'em away when I'm done) I've also just copied over the install files to the HDD, installed from there.

Then of course there's the issue of making sure you have all the PB drivers too.......

omega31

08-11-2002, 10:36 AM

You should partition and format the drive in your 486. Newer machines read hard drives differently than older comps. I tried partitioning and formatting a 1 gb drive that was known to work in a pentium 430fx motherboard in my current comp and tried putting it in the pentium mobo. It wouldn't read it and would take a long time to even recognize it. I had to re-partition it in the pentium mobo to get it to work. After roughly 500 mb, the bios has to translate the extra cylinders to fit in the old parameters.

http://www.firmware.com/support/bios/hdmath.htm

paramufay

08-11-2002, 11:29 AM

HORSEFEATHERS

your making a mountian out of a molehill

someone has compressed the drive

win 95 cannot load on a compressed drive (dos fat 16)

use a zerofill program to return the drive to factory status.

HD must be at least 340 megs to load win 95

AllGamer

08-11-2002, 11:47 AM

Originally posted by paramufay
HORSEFEATHERS

your making a mountian out of a molehill

someone has compressed the drive

win 95 cannot load on a compressed drive (dos fat 16)

use a zerofill program to return the drive to factory status.

HD must be at least 340 megs to load win 95

Finally, someone with a brain here

thanks paramufay, you beat me to it.
:D

Bob Watkins

11-29-2002, 08:58 AM

:t I have a similar problem. I cannot reload Win95. C drive is full and compressed. I cannot seem to decompress. H drive is full and mounted. Somehow I have added a G drive? The system tells me to empty the recycle bin and delete more information to make space to load Win 95. However, I have uninstalled, deleted and/or emptied everything possible. I want to format the hard drive and start over, reloading all programs. Please tell me how to do this. Thanks!

paramufay

11-29-2002, 09:14 AM

ukulele

11-29-2002, 12:53 PM

Originally posted by Bob Watkins
:t I have a similar problem. I cannot reload Win95. C drive is full and compressed. I cannot seem to decompress. H drive is full and mounted. Somehow I have added a G drive? The system tells me to empty the recycle bin and delete more information to make space to load Win 95. However, I have uninstalled, deleted and/or emptied everything possible. I want to format the hard drive and start over, reloading all programs. Please tell me how to do this. Thanks!

Use Fdisk to remove old partitions and repartition. Format with the /S option

Load the cdrom drivers into DOS

Load windows95.

Your biggest problem is with the cdrom drivers. If you have enough ram load win98 instead. The win98 start disk will load atapi drivers at boot up. A win 95 startup disk will not. I have successfully loaded win 98se with 16mb ram but it was a slow dog.

Bob Watkins

11-29-2002, 03:10 PM

Thanks for your reply and information. I guess I don't know how to do that. In one pc I have went to DOS mode and typed in format C: and went from there but I cannot get this one to take any commands in DOS. It says C drive cannot be re-formatted. Could you tell me exactly where to get to prompt Fdisc? Thanks.

ukulele

11-29-2002, 05:23 PM

Fdisk is found on a boot disk. There is a bit to learn first, but now is as a good a time as any to learn how to use it. Go here http://www.fdisk.com/fdisk/ and just start reading.

Bob Watkins

11-30-2002, 12:24 PM

Thanks again for your reply and information. I found the information needed to format the HD and reloaded the operating program. I still have one problem. I have no sound. If I try to play a CD, I get a message that says no Sound Mixer has been installed. I have been through all the disks that came with this system and I cannot find anything that says mixer. I have installed the sound card and drivers. Can you help me again? Thanks!!!

ukulele

11-30-2002, 05:53 PM

Do you know if this is a plug 'n play soundcard or is it onboard? Most of the older 486 boards did not have on board sound. Do the drivers look right in device manager? What kind of sound card is it?

Bob Watkins

12-01-2002, 07:47 AM

The soundcard for this system I believe is an upgrade. It is a 3D 64 Voice Wavetable Spacewalker Soundsystem, Opti 933. It is in the ISA slot and this is Windows 95 first edition. I downloaded the drivers from the internet just a few days ago and I am confident the drivers are ok.. The original problem was not being able to play a music CD. Then as I worked to correct that I found problems with space and HD. I believe everything is ok now but I still can't play a CD. Originally it would not recognize a CD which now it does. Originally there were sounds when using programs in Windows but now there is none. The only problem I have now is the system tells me there is no mixer loaded. Device Driver says the sound card is working normal. Thanks for all your help so far. i truly appreciate it.

mcjamesk

12-01-2002, 08:28 AM

you probably need some sort of media player to play cd's, allthough windoze should have installed one. you can get windows media player from ms site.

mtnbiker

12-01-2002, 11:01 AM

If you've installed drivers more than once, I would restart in safe mode and go to device manager and look at your sound card. you may have it installed more than once. I had a buddy that had major sound problems. Found out he had his sound card installed 7 times uninstalled all of them restarted reinstalled his card ONCE cleared up all his problems.

On another note this may be a stupid question but do you have a cable going from your cd-rom to your sound card:)

ukulele

12-01-2002, 11:27 AM

About all you can do at this point is dump the drivers in safe mode, and reload them on the next boot. I would also try downloading Winamp. and see if that works. Windows media is probably too big a program for that old system.

Bob Watkins

12-02-2002, 07:44 AM

I started working on this system because it would read data disks but would not recognize a music CD. It had so much information on the HD and there was no room to make any changes. I reformatted and cleared everything and reloaded Win95 1st edition. it now recognizes the CDs and reads Data disks but I get no sound. It says I have no Recording or Mixing device loaded. I have loaded Media Play and Real Player but still no sound. The hard ware is connected as it was when I started working on this PC. When I started it did have windows program sounds but as I said did not read a music CD. Could it be that the Sound Card has gone bad? Thanks for all your help so far. I do truly appreciate it.

sm8000

12-02-2002, 09:42 PM

If it gives you a message about not finding a mixing device then it is not detecting your sound card, which may need new drivers. Can you try the card in a different ISA slot? Also go to Control Panel and make sure that sound card is chosen as the preferred device for playback.