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Windows 98 SE CD
A few weeks ago my son, who lives in Denver, gave me his retired Dell Inspiron 7500 Laptop computer. It has the Reference and Troubleshooting Guide, Setup Guide and Windows 98 Users Manual. He also gave me the Windows 98 Second Edition Boot Diskette. He cannot find the Windows 98 CD that came with it. He recently moved into a new house and knows it's someplace. I told him that everything had to be someplace. But that doesn't solve my problem. The operating system is W98 SE.
First, does anybody know how a person can obtain a copy of the W98 SE CD? I have contacted Dell Sales and they said it's not available. It would certainly be handy to have this CD for obvious reasons. One reason is, I ordered and installed an additional 128 Megs of RAM, bringing the total to 256 Megs. When I boot the system it tells me that the "Amount of system memory has changed or the Suspend-to-disk file is missing. See Suspend-To-Disk file in the online users guide for instructions." Well, it says I need the phdisk file (which supposedly is on the CD I don't have. I went to the dell.com site, did a search on phdisk, and after quite a bit of reading, I have determined my problem can be solved if I download a file called "i75phda0.exe" and install it and run it from DOS mode, following the instructions in my Troubleshooting guide on page 2-12 & 2-13. Would it be OK to run this file from my A: drive instead of the CD? I don't see why that would matter, but I have a feeling that there are many experts on this forum that can 1) tell me if I am about to download the correct file I mentioned above, and 2) that it's OK to run it from the A: drive. If it is OK, do I need to specify a location as to where I want the newly created file to go, or will just running it from the A: drive send it to the right place. The manual says to follow the instruction on my screen to create the save-to-disk file. Hopefully I might be able to run it from the C: drive. (I live in hopes).
I apologize for the length of this message, but I wanted to include the 2 issues in one e-mail. Any/all assistance will be appreciated.
delta dart
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Posted March 12th, 2005 03:00
Wb
I have a Dell laptop CPL 300DXT and did a search for the i75phda0.exe and phdisk files. It did not show such a file anywhere. I also did a search on a WIN 98 and Win98Se installation CD for the same files and had similiar results. It may be a cab file so would not show up with a search.Searching Google led me to this web site with info for the "phdisk" file..http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000348.htm It dosen't help much but does explain what it is. Might help!!!
You can probably find a WIN 98SE installation disk on EBAY for future needs.
Russ
A BIOS update may very well resolve the phdisk issue (since it's a Phoenix BIOS file, rather than a Windows or Dell one), and it's a good idea anyway, if you're not running the most recent version on an I7500. The reason the i75phda0.exe file doesn't show up on a CPi is that it's exclusive to the I7500 model, thus the i75 prefix. Some notebooks have counterparts across platform lines, i.e., Inspiron 3800/Latitude CPx/CpT, and these relatives shared many of the same parts, and could use a number of the same downloads (although the BIOS contents were different, to address the lack of a similar docking port across the lines, among other things) but the I7500 appears to have been a breed unto itself.
A14 is the most recent BIOS version (and the only one that appears to be available at the Dell Downloads site, for some odd reason) for the I7500. If that's not what you have installed, it would be a good idea to get it, as it should contain all the updates available in previous versions as well, and there were a number of significant changes made to that BIOS.
Edit: By the way, it appears that you might still be able to get a legal copy of Win98SE here:
http://www.directdeals.com/Item_OEM-WIN98SE.aspx
Message Edited by Flooby on 03-12-2005 01:18 AM
Flooby,
Well, I downloaded the version of phdisk.exe that I mentioned in my original posting and did the installation this morning. It went smoothly.
I don't know how to find the version of BIOS that I have, but maybe you can tell me where to start looking or maybe I can go to the Dell support site to determine where I should look. I've looked at Control Panel but didn't see anything. I haven't hit the F2 on bootup to look there. I'll give that a shot.
Thanks for passing along the web site for the legal version of the CD. Have you done business with these folks in the past?
wb0dul - aka Dick
- Hi Chuket,I had downloaded the file from the Dell Tech Support web site and saved it to both my laptop and desktop system. Based on what you said, I saved it over to the Microsoft Boot Disk I mentioned in my original post. I ran it this morning, following the command structure that was in my Troubleshooting Guide, and it worked. I didn't even have to tell the program where to save the file, it did it automatically. Thanks, I appreciate your help.wb0dulaka Dick
Yes, I am. If you'd like to communnicate "off forum", you can e-mail me at wb0dul@gmail.com.
wb0dul - Dick
chuket
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Posted March 12th, 2005 02:00