how load win 98 on old laptop?

  • Thread starter Thread starter ~ Avery Anderson~
  • Start date Start date
A

~ Avery Anderson~

Hi,
A friend gave me an old NEC Versa laptop. It has no usb, it was made around
1996, it has a one gig hard drive in it. Serial port, parallel port,
pciamci slot or whatever its called with a 28k modem in it, a video out, and
one bay that can hold either a 3 1/2" floppy drive, or a 2X cdrom, both of
which I have.

Here's the problem, it has win98 on it but it doesn't load, it halts saying
no himem.sys loaded or something like that. So I tried copying the file
from a floppy into the windows directory but it never seems to get in there
because I continually get the same message. Even after it says the file was
copied. Then I made a directory on the hard drive, and copied himem.sys to
it, and sure enough it was there. Then I copied it from there to the
windows directory, and it isn't there, and booting gives me the same error
message.

the drives aren't hot swappable, so the problem is I can't get to the cdrom.
The win98 setup disk works in the 3.5 but it doesn't load cdrom drivers
because it doesn't see a cdrom in the system because there isn't one. Even
if it did, the system would crash if I pulled swapped the drives hot.

The bios has no switches to change boot order. It only has 3.5 and then the
c drive.

So I sent a way for a 3.5 to 2.5 converter to put the drive in a regular
computer and load the os from there, but no luck, the jack on the NEC's hard
drive is smaller than the 2.5" on the converter, so about now I'm looking
for some ideas.

Thanks for any help with this,

Avery
 
Hi,
A friend gave me an old NEC Versa laptop. It has no usb, it was made around
1996, it has a one gig hard drive in it. Serial port, parallel port,
pciamci slot or whatever its called with a 28k modem in it, a video out, and
one bay that can hold either a 3 1/2" floppy drive, or a 2X cdrom, both of
which I have.

Here's the problem, it has win98 on it but it doesn't load, it halts saying
no himem.sys
Click to expand...

Faulty RAM.



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Hi,
A friend gave me an old NEC Versa laptop. It has no usb, it was made around
1996, it has a one gig hard drive in it. Serial port, parallel port,
pciamci slot or whatever its called with a 28k modem in it, a video out, and
one bay that can hold either a 3 1/2" floppy drive, or a 2X cdrom, both of
which I have.

Here's the problem, it has win98 on it but it doesn't load, it halts saying
no himem.sys loaded or something like that. So I tried copying the file
from a floppy into the windows directory but it never seems to get in there
because I continually get the same message. Even after it says the file was
copied. Then I made a directory on the hard drive, and copied himem.sys to
it, and sure enough it was there. Then I copied it from there to the
windows directory, and it isn't there, and booting gives me the same error
message.

the drives aren't hot swappable, so the problem is I can't get to the cdrom.
The win98 setup disk works in the 3.5 but it doesn't load cdrom drivers
because it doesn't see a cdrom in the system because there isn't one. Even
if it did, the system would crash if I pulled swapped the drives hot.

The bios has no switches to change boot order. It only has 3.5 and then the
c drive.

So I sent a way for a 3.5 to 2.5 converter to put the drive in a regular
computer and load the os from there, but no luck, the jack on the NEC's hard
drive is smaller than the 2.5" on the converter, so about now I'm looking
for some ideas.

Thanks for any help with this,

Avery
Click to expand...

It's a Win/95 vintage machine.

Did W/98 come out on floppies ?

Just maybe if you looked on a w/98 CDROM you'd find that all the CAB files
were less than 1.44 MB and could be copied to floppies. and you could
use them for to install.

Look on http://bootdisks.com/ for the boot floppies.


What a PITA.
 
Al,
Thanks for the tip. If the win98 cabs don't fit on a floppy, I'm sure the
win95 ones will.

Also, there is a complete set of cabs on the hard drive. I can boot to an A
prompt and get to the C drive and see them. The install in there works, but
I aborted it after the start because I don't know what software key that set
of cabs uses. Is there a way to extract the key?

Thanks,

Avery,

ps: the original windows directory I can browse, too. Is there a way to
find the key there? If so, I could use the cabs to reinstall because in all
likelihood they are the ones originally used to install the OS.
 
Better yet, just download and burn the file to make a boot CD!!
That will have the CD-ROM drivers already on it. Just make sure that
your laptop can boot from the CD. You might have to go into your BIOS
and set it up for that.
 
Hi Seabat,

Nope, that's the problem. There is no setting in the cmos to make it boot
from a CD, if there was, I could just use the win98 CD. Then again, I
don't know how to make a boot CD. I can make a bootable floppy, though.
Well, I can let windows make one for me anyway.

Thanks,

Avery
 
~ Avery Anderson~ said:
Hi,
A friend gave me an old NEC Versa laptop. It has no usb, it was made
around 1996, it has a one gig hard drive in it. Serial port, parallel
port, pciamci slot or whatever its called with a 28k modem in it, a video
out, and one bay that can hold either a 3 1/2" floppy drive, or a 2X
cdrom, both of which I have.

Here's the problem, it has win98 on it but it doesn't load, it halts
saying no himem.sys loaded or something like that. So I tried copying the
file from a floppy into the windows directory but it never seems to get in
there because I continually get the same message. Even after it says the
file was copied. Then I made a directory on the hard drive, and copied
himem.sys to it, and sure enough it was there. Then I copied it from
there to the windows directory, and it isn't there, and booting gives me
the same error message.
Click to expand...

Perhaps you are missing something here, although Himem.sys exists, is it
being loaded by the autoexec.bat file.

MJP
 
MJP said:
Perhaps you are missing something here, although Himem.sys exists,
is it being loaded by the autoexec.bat file.
Click to expand...

I would think that is the problem.

Man, I messed with AUTOEXEC.BAT, CONFIG.SYS, and all the trappings
thousands of times. Those were the days, I guess.

When desperate to compute, with much effort I stuffed Windows 95 and
AOL on a 41GB hard disk drive.
 
Hi,
A friend gave me an old NEC Versa laptop. It has no usb, it was made around
1996, it has a one gig hard drive in it. Serial port, parallel port,
pciamci slot or whatever its called with a 28k modem in it, a video out, and
one bay that can hold either a 3 1/2" floppy drive, or a 2X cdrom, both of
which I have.

Here's the problem, it has win98 on it but it doesn't load, it halts saying
no himem.sys loaded or something like that. So I tried copying the file
from a floppy into the windows directory but it never seems to get in there
because I continually get the same message. Even after it says the file was
copied. Then I made a directory on the hard drive, and copied himem.sys to
it, and sure enough it was there. Then I copied it from there to the
windows directory, and it isn't there, and booting gives me the same error
message.

the drives aren't hot swappable, so the problem is I can't get to the cdrom.
The win98 setup disk works in the 3.5 but it doesn't load cdrom drivers
because it doesn't see a cdrom in the system because there isn't one. Even
if it did, the system would crash if I pulled swapped the drives hot.

The bios has no switches to change boot order. It only has 3.5 and then the
c drive.

So I sent a way for a 3.5 to 2.5 converter to put the drive in a regular
computer and load the os from there, but no luck, the jack on the NEC's hard
drive is smaller than the 2.5" on the converter, so about now I'm looking
for some ideas.

Thanks for any help with this,

Avery
Click to expand...


Do this:
From the floppy, format the disk (or at least wipe the system
folders), and install a basic bootable DOS with CD drivers.
Then let that system boot with the CDROM drive and Win98 disc, and run
install from it.
 
Perhaps you are missing something here, although Himem.sys exists, is it
being loaded by the autoexec.bat file.

MJP
Click to expand...

I just assumed a win98 boot disk, would load what ever it needed.
I'll check the batch file.
thanks,
Avery
 
Do this:
From the floppy, format the disk (or at least wipe the system
folders), and install a basic bootable DOS with CD drivers.
Then let that system boot with the CDROM drive and Win98 disc, and run
install from it.
Click to expand...

Your idea sounds promising, if I'm understanding it correctly.
Are you saying re-format the hard drive?

By install do you mean copy the win98 boot disk
onto the freshly formatted hard drive?

Then swap the 3 1/2 drive for the optical,
then reboot and the hard drive will do what
the boot disk does, and I'll have access to the
optical drive?

Avery
 
Perhaps you are missing something here, although Himem.sys exists, is it
being loaded by the autoexec.bat file.

MJP
Click to expand...

Himem.sys is loaded ny default in win98 and does not require any lines
in the Autoexec.bat.
The reason I have posted that the fault is in the RAM is because of
the Fault Call about himem.sys as it's loaded early in the boot
sequence and if it cannot be found it usually means there's faulty
memory addresses in the RAM sticks.
HTH :)



--
Free Windows/PC help,
http://www.geocities.com/sheppola/trouble.html
remove obvious to reply
email (e-mail address removed)
Free original songs to download and,"BURN" :O)
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/8/nomessiahsmusic.htm
 
Himem.sys is loaded ny default in win98 and does not require any lines
in the Autoexec.bat.
The reason I have posted that the fault is in the RAM is because of
the Fault Call about himem.sys as it's loaded early in the boot
sequence and if it cannot be found it usually means there's faulty
memory addresses in the RAM sticks.
HTH :)



--
Free Windows/PC help,
http://www.geocities.com/sheppola/trouble.html
remove obvious to reply
email (e-mail address removed)
Free original songs to download and,"BURN" :O)
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/8/nomessiahsmusic.htm
Click to expand...


The frist PC CDrom readers had proprietary controllers that needed
driver software. YOu might look into th eLinux laptop world to see if
they've identified what's in your model.
 
Your idea sounds promising, if I'm understanding it correctly.
Are you saying re-format the hard drive?
Click to expand...

If it needs it.
By install do you mean copy the win98 boot disk
onto the freshly formatted hard drive?
Click to expand...

Not necessarily, just run the installer from the CD.
Then swap the 3 1/2 drive for the optical,
then reboot and the hard drive will do what
the boot disk does, and I'll have access to the
optical drive?
Click to expand...


Yes.The HDD will boot into DOS with CD drivers.
 
Gary J. Tait said:
If it needs it.


Not necessarily, just run the installer from the CD.
Click to expand...

........... here is whear I'm loosing you. The problem is I can only get to
the A drive, via a win98 boot disk. Once there I can access the C drive.
If I boot with the cdrom drive in the comuter, it doesn't boot at all. So,
what does it mean to "just run the installer from the CD? To show you how
stupid I really am, "what's an installer?" the code that loads the operating
system? Sorry I'm being so dense here.

......but I can't get here if I can't "run the installer frm the CD." right?
 
dont format the c drive you will lose all the cab files that are on there
and if setup is also on there you can install from the hdd

boot to a:\
then do this -

sys c:

this will copy system files from your boot disk to the c drive [HDD]
then it will boot from the hard drive to a minimal dos prompt
from there you can run setup on the cdrom, if you can build an autoexec file
with cdrom drivers

however

i believe shep's right, you may not get too far anyway with the ram probs,

this machine may not be worth the trouble ;>{
 
.......... here is whear I'm loosing you. The problem is I can only get to
the A drive, via a win98 boot disk. Once there I can access the C drive.
If I boot with the cdrom drive in the comuter, it doesn't boot at all. So,
what does it mean to "just run the installer from the CD? To show you how
stupid I really am, "what's an installer?" the code that loads the operating
system? Sorry I'm being so dense here.
Click to expand...

Change the CMOS battery.It may not have enough charge to sustain the
BIOS.
HTH :)



--
Free Windows/PC help,
http://www.geocities.com/sheppola/trouble.html
remove obvious to reply
email (e-mail address removed)
Free original songs to download and,"BURN" :O)
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/8/nomessiahsmusic.htm
 
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