The 20g is fine for that laptop. Up to 40g is no strain with W98SE or W-Me. A12 is a better BIOS version, but will have no effect as to Harddrive use. If you use a W98 Dell Recovery CD, it is selfbooting in the CDROM and will partition and format your new bare drive, BUT, it will not put in the Suspend -to-Disk partition. You should do that first with this Dell software for the purpose; it also will Fdisk the Drive and make your Primary DOS Active Partition but without format. http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/format.aspx?releaseid=R40801&c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19
You should also make the Suspend to Disk Partition first for the other type of install shown below.
If you use a Retail or nonspecific OEM set of W98SE, those are not selfbooting CDs, and you will need to start with a W98 Boot floppy to boot the CD Drive and then switch to the CD Drive in DOS. That will require a Parallel port cable for the floppy drive, to have it and the CD drive working at the same time. The Floppy Boot Disk cannot boot the CD Drive unless it can see it as present. If you do not have the Parallel Port cable for the Floppy, get one from Ebay, as it is almost a necessity for your model and others. You will also need to Fdisk your drive with it and the Floppy Drive using the W98 boot disk to make your Primary DOS Active Partition and format it with the command Format C:/s Then reboot and select Start your Computer with CDROM Support from the menu, put the W98SE CD in the Drive, and at the A: prompt type/enter Setup. That should get you going.
ok thanks! im using the other option that you had pointed out....i.e using a non oem version to load windows...
but you are saying that i dont need to upgrade to AO12? it should work fine even with AO11
see i had bought this hard disk about 2 weeks back. did everything that you suggested....and it seemed to work fine...
then when windows was starting for the first time....the screen went blue....so i waited for sometime nothing happened....just blue screen! then i turned off the computer....restarted and kept getting the scandisk message. and that hard disk was ruined....so i got a new one in exchange.
just want to avoid the same thing happening again....btw my comp is PII 300 and has 128 mb ram....this hard disk should still be ok right?
leduke30
2 Intern
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4K Posts
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March 21st, 2005 16:00
The 20g is fine for that laptop. Up to 40g is no strain with W98SE or W-Me. A12 is a better BIOS version, but will have no effect as to Harddrive use. If you use a W98 Dell Recovery CD, it is selfbooting in the CDROM and will partition and format your new bare drive, BUT, it will not put in the Suspend -to-Disk partition. You should do that first with this Dell software for the purpose; it also will Fdisk the Drive and make your Primary DOS Active Partition but without format.
http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/format.aspx?releaseid=R40801&c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19
You should also make the Suspend to Disk Partition first for the other type of install shown below.
If you use a Retail or nonspecific OEM set of W98SE, those are not selfbooting CDs, and you will need to start with a W98 Boot floppy to boot the CD Drive and then switch to the CD Drive in DOS. That will require a Parallel port cable for the floppy drive, to have it and the CD drive working at the same time. The Floppy Boot Disk cannot boot the CD Drive unless it can see it as present. If you do not have the Parallel Port cable for the Floppy, get one from Ebay, as it is almost a necessity for your model and others. You will also need to Fdisk your drive with it and the Floppy Drive using the W98 boot disk to make your Primary DOS Active Partition and format it with the command Format C:/s Then reboot and select Start your Computer with CDROM Support from the menu, put the W98SE CD in the Drive, and at the A: prompt type/enter Setup. That should get you going.
Message Edited by leduke30 on 03-21-2005 01:10 PM
Radar75
7 Posts
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March 22nd, 2005 01:00
leduke30
2 Intern
•
4K Posts
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March 22nd, 2005 02:00
Radar75
7 Posts
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March 22nd, 2005 23:00
thanks! everything worked fine...
cheers