Hello! I had a client come by yesterday with a computer that 1) had
lost its mouse and 2) could not access the floppy drive. After talking
a bit, I found that he had also erased his C drive (his Win95
installation was on his D drive). The other aspect of interest to this
case was that his C drive (a 3.3 G Maxtor drive that he added a "few"
months ago) was running under EZ Drive overlay. BIOS is AMI (late 94)
on a "generic" Taiwanese MB (upgraded from a 486SX MB). The D drive is
an older 125 MB Seagate drive.
After some investigation, it seems that both the mouse and the floppy
were running off an ISA card (with IDE connectors, etc for all
peripherals) that was with the original MB. Finally, I put in a new
COM/printer card, attached the floppy cable to the MB, and all worked.
I got rid of the EZ Drive overlay (thanks to the list for help on
that!) and was able to actually use the whole Maxtor HD as C and E.
The problem (sorry it took so long to get here): Win95 will not
install completely. The CD-ROM comes off the sound card (Sound Blaster
Pro), so to make it all happen faster, I copied his Win95 folder to a
parallel port zip drive, then to E and installed from there. All went
fine until the point where Win95 "is starting for the first time". All
files have been copied from the installing process. The next step is
to "set up" (time, date, printer). When this reboot occurs, the Win95
screen comes up (the artsy blue one) and the HD whirs away. Then a DOS
screen comes up with the message "Windows is configuring your setup.
This may take a few minutes (or some such)". Then, "Windows has
completed the setup configuration and is continuing to load" (Both
these messages are the standard after you've added new hardware or
made major changes to the registry - I'm just not remembering the
exact wording.). After about five seconds, the HD stops and the
everything dies. I've waited up to 30 minutes and nothing. All is
frozen solid. I've rebooted, tried to reinstall, reformatted the HD
and used a different Win95 installation files, etc. In all instances
Win 95 will not get beyond this point. However, I can get into safe
mode. Of course, none of the system settings are there because they
haven't been set up yet. Trying anything from safe mode yields no
result. I can install DOS 6.22 on the HD no problem.
Sorry to be so long, but there is a lot to tell. If anyone has any
ideas, I'd be very appreciative!
Will Stephenson
mailto:[log in to unmask]
Will Stephenson
mailto:[log in to unmask]
|
