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5197
January 19th, 2004 23:00
trouble installing DOS 6.22
I am not sure what is the best venue on the forum for this topic as it seemingly involves both Hardware and Software
The message I see:
DHCP MAC ADDR: 00 C0 4F 64 5D 27
DHCP.../ (spinning slash mark)
DHCP......PXE-M0F: Exiting PXE
The problem I am having:
This is an older Dell Optiplex GX1 350. I want to get to a DOS prompt or enable the computer to begin the process of installing DOS 6.22, so I can ultimately load Windows 95. Right now I can only get to the BIOS with F2 or I can get to 3Com's PXE, where the system gets to the DHCP mentioned above and then churns and finally exits. There is nothing I can seemingly do from the BIOS to initiate installing DOS 6.22, and I cannot boot at all with disk one of DOS 6.22 in the a: drive. This system may have been stripped of even a version of DOS???
What steps I have taken:
I have looked through the BIOS setup. I have tried booting with the first disk of DOS 6.22 in the a: drive but receive the typical illegal error on that one.
I have tried hitting F8 many times after seeing the Dell symbol during bootup process
I have tried hitting 'ctrl'+ 'alt' + 'enter' many times during the bootup process after seeing the Dell symbol, as many of your message board suggested to no avail.
I have tried starting the computer with the Windows 95 CD in the CD-ROM drive with no success.
Is there some kind of a bootup diskette for DOS 6.22 that will initiate the install, I can download from somewhere or can you send me the file? Any insight would be appreciated.
Thanks, bloozman
bloozman12@yahoo.com
The message I see:
DHCP MAC ADDR: 00 C0 4F 64 5D 27
DHCP.../ (spinning slash mark)
DHCP......PXE-M0F: Exiting PXE
The problem I am having:
This is an older Dell Optiplex GX1 350. I want to get to a DOS prompt or enable the computer to begin the process of installing DOS 6.22, so I can ultimately load Windows 95. Right now I can only get to the BIOS with F2 or I can get to 3Com's PXE, where the system gets to the DHCP mentioned above and then churns and finally exits. There is nothing I can seemingly do from the BIOS to initiate installing DOS 6.22, and I cannot boot at all with disk one of DOS 6.22 in the a: drive. This system may have been stripped of even a version of DOS???
What steps I have taken:
I have looked through the BIOS setup. I have tried booting with the first disk of DOS 6.22 in the a: drive but receive the typical illegal error on that one.
I have tried hitting F8 many times after seeing the Dell symbol during bootup process
I have tried hitting 'ctrl'+ 'alt' + 'enter' many times during the bootup process after seeing the Dell symbol, as many of your message board suggested to no avail.
I have tried starting the computer with the Windows 95 CD in the CD-ROM drive with no success.
Is there some kind of a bootup diskette for DOS 6.22 that will initiate the install, I can download from somewhere or can you send me the file? Any insight would be appreciated.
Thanks, bloozman
bloozman12@yahoo.com
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jwatt
4.4K Posts
0
January 25th, 2004 21:00
I found a site with a credible-sounding set of instructions for reinstalling Win95, including some notes about partitions, fdisk, and formatting hard drives. It sounds much like the steps you've performed, but you might find it useful.
It's been so long since I've installed Win95 that I don't remember whether a Win95 CD is supposed to be bootable. But from your results, and the reinstall procedure I found, it looks like Win95 CD's weren't set up to be bootable. Hence the need to start via a bootable floppy with CD support.
Jim
bloozman
26 Posts
0
January 25th, 2004 22:00
No worries. I kind of stumbled through it, but I got Windows 95 installed and running!! I am pleased I figured out at least one part on my own -- I guess it was the easy part.
Once I reset the BIOS to initiate with CD-ROM drive first, I hit a partial block, with that invalid system error message, again, but I just had to access the CD-ROM drive, called D: on this machine.
Once in D:>
I hit the directory on there and saw a setup.exe file. I typed in
D:> setup
and I began to get some setup messages, I read them and moved through them and the Windows 95 installation started up from the CD-ROM, at that point.
I have successfully loaded it. I may even be able to use the old Windows 95 fax capability, again. I miss that on my Windows 2000 machines. They should not have dropped that.
Incidentally, Les was right that it was not necessary to load DOS 6.22, first. Perhaps I still should, though.
What do you think?
Thank you very much. I could not have done it without your help. I am immensely gratified. I very much appreciate the education and time-consuming assistance.
Nice Work Guys!!
Joe
jwatt
4.4K Posts
0
January 25th, 2004 22:00
What do you think?
There's no reason to load DOS 6.22, especially now that you've got Win95 installed. Clearly (now!) Win95 CDs aren't bootable, so something is needed to get things started. A boot floppy with minimal hard drive management tools and a CD driver that works are enough to get started.
(edit) Les deserves credit for the breakthrough that made this work. In this note, he correctly pointed out that if the hard drive didn't have a master boot record on it, the drive would not appear at all. And that was why the CD was showing up as "C:" before "fdisk" was run. I'd forgotten all about that!
Thanks for the kind words and for posting your results!
Jim
Message Edited by jimw on 01-25-2004 05:38 PM