BIOS not recognising CD

[Willybolly17]

I have been trying to upgrade 95 to 2000.

On about the third reboot from the CD I get a "A DISK READ ERROR OCCURRED" Alt/Ctrl/Del to restart and it just loops back to the same message.

My computer is a Technicl P100 computer to which I have added 128Mb of RAM

I suspect the problem is that the BIOS does not recognise that there is a CD and therefore you cannot boot from it. I have seen AMIBIOS literature that shows a CD in the BIOS so that it can be put in the boot sequence.

My Motherboard is a Biostar 8500 TAC with AMIBIOS TAC0503A dated 10/10/94

The Biostar site suggests that I find a AMIBOOT.ROM put it on a floppy and press Ctrl/ Home http://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en/support/faq.php?S_ID=392
and http://jc-schwartz.net/public/Bilan_jcs.pdf
but it does not do anything. I have tried it on a 'blank' disk and a boot disk - neither works.

I have also found an AFDOS.EXE which I can get to the A:> but I am unsure about the options I should use and the ROM file which I should use.
http://www.ami.com/support/bios.cfm

Can anyone help please?

 

[Ian]

I don't know if flashing the BIOS would help at all, as if you get the disk rear error then it sounds like your system is booting from the CD but there is a problem.

Your system doesn't acually meet the minimum requirements of Windows 2000 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/304297), so even if you could get the installation to progress it wouldn't work very well.

Are you based in the UK? If so, you can probably pick up a newer PC for nothing (or next to nothing) which would happily run Windows 2000 (but would probably come with a newer OS). Freecycle and other sites will sometimes list old PCs that are to be given away .

 

[floppybootstomp]

A sixteen year old computer probably wasn't designed to recognise an optical drive, Win 95 would have been loaded from a series of floppy disks I expect.

And as Ian said, the hardware isn't capable of running the software and if it did load it would run sluggish and erratic.

 

[Willybolly17]

Thank you both for your speedy replies and suggestions.

My understanding of minimum requirements is that I have plenty of RAM but my processor is 100MHz rather than 133MHz - will this make a big difference?

I can't remember where I have seen it, but the later version of the BIOS in the Setup definitely lists CD and allows booting from the CD.

Thank you again.

 

[Ian]

I think booting from CD will be fine (I had a Windows 95 CD myself and used it on a 486), however the P100 CPU will cause problems. It really isn't worth installing it on a PC with those specs, sorry .

Is there any reason you want to upgrade to Windows 2000?

 

[Willybolly17]

Hi

Again thank you for your speedy response.

I want to upgrade to 2000 because I want to install a Netgear wireless USB internet connector - Netgear will not install with 95.

My other problem is that I did not get a 95 disk with the machine originally as it was pre-installed.

Thanks