Oh dear...this was NOT the question to bring up on this list with me on it
as I have JUST went through the HUGE PAIN IN THE ASS of re-installing a
dell inspiron system (sorry, it's a great question and the right place to
post it, just that I've recently gone through the process and have MANY
complaints that i'm about to let out now..:).
Let me put it this way...before you do ANYTHING MAKE SURE YOU HAVE EVERY
DRIVER IN EXISTANCE for your machine backed up on disk...don't assume
anything. Dell does not ship the correct network card drivers (actually
they don't ship any at all..they expect you do download them from 3com, how
the hell you are supposed to do that without a network card I have no f*ing
clue, and even then the network drivers on 3com's home page DON'T SUPPORT
THE DELL NETWORK CARD.) They did, however, ship me cd-rom drivers...that
don't support the cdrom drive I have (the one dell ships by default
btw..not a special order). I had to use another computer on my desk to
download those. Oh yea..and I had to spend approximately 5 hours on the
phone with dell tech support before they would send me the drivers for the
DELL 3c575-tx card that they ship, they arn't on the ftp or download web
sites. After making completely sure that you have EVERY DRIVER for your
computer ON DISK, then pop a blank floppy into your drive, type:
format a: /u/s and hit enter. let it format the floppy and install the
boot files to it. Then, you need to find your cd-rom driver on diskette
(if you are running 95 or 98 I gaurentee it won't be on the damn hard
drive, it couldn't be that easy) and copy it to your boot floppy. Copy
format.com, fdisk.exe(or com wich ever it is), edit.com, mscdex.exe, and
sys.com from the \windows\command directory to your boot floppy, and copy
the himem.sys file from \windows to your disk as well. Now, you need to
create a config.sys and autoexec.bat file.
config.sys:
device=a:\himem.sys
device=a:\<cdromdriver> /d:cdrom
autoexec.bat:
a:\mscdex.exe /d:cdrom
or something like that. That will get you a bootable floppy that loads the
cdrom driver at boot and has the ability to fdisk, format, and sys the
harddrive. It also has the edit.com file on it so that you can modify the
config and autoexec file in case of errors. Now, BOOT THE FLOPPY. When
the CD-ROM drivers fail to load (and they probably will since dell probably
sent you the wrong damn CD-Drivers), reboot into windows and download a
cd-driver that works and go through the above process all over again. If
by some freak chance of god it does work (you've just has a miracle
preformed before you, make sure to thank whatever god you believe in)
double check that you have every driver you could possibly want on your
system on floppy and that the floppy's work. THEN and ONLY THEN should you
reboot your system OFF the floppy disk, insert the win98 or 95 cd into the
drive and try to read it...if you read it go back to a: and fdisk and
format your C: drive, sys is on there for no real purpose except in case
something screws up you can sys your HD and do something..I don't know what
but at least your HD would be bootable at that point.. Anyway, once your
system is fdisked and formatted, you have all the drivers you need to
reinstall, you can access the cd drive, and you have the win98/95 cd in the
drive, then start the re-install of 98/95 FIRST. Get it set up completely
first. If you do linux first (and it's tempting to set up a decent
workable os first as opposed to one that crashes once for each 15 hours
it's running at least) then when you install 95/98, it will blow away lilo.
Anyway, set up 98/95 get it up and running, install all the drivers (and
call dell tech support to get the ones you missed or that don't work..again
this is sort of inevatable, just don't let them dish you off to another
company...all dell shipped parts are supported directly by dell), and once
95 is back and working again (took me about 2 days time for htis one..and
i've been in the network admin/IS indutry for about 6 years now) then put
your boot floppy in the drive and go through the (compairitivly) seemless
install of Linux on your Inspiron. As you read about 45 minutes ago (this
is a long e-mail), I warned you that this was a bad question to ask of a
person who just went through this living hell..*snicker* Anyway, on a more
serious note, I've delt with re-installing computers for many many years,
and I've NEVER seen this much crap and inefficiency in a company as i've
seen with Dell. The only redeaming factor about Dell and the inspiron
is.....well.....let me get back to you on that one.
Doug Wagner
p.s. Any comments to the above can be directed to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
If you've got a bitch or complaint about dell you'd like posted but havint
had the time or inclination, i'm starting a page to do just that...:) Your
name will be attached to the complaint tho...just for my protection..:)
p.p.s Oh yea...the inspiron is a very nice piece of hardware...mind you
it's not well designed hardware, and the technical support for the company
supporting it isn't worth the powder to blow itself to hell, not to mention
the parts and repairs part of the company....but it is a nice piece of
hardware when it's finally up and running.
-----Original Message-----
From: Karl Pfleger [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Saturday, November 07, 1998 4:43 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: re-installing Win98 on a freshly repartitioned machine
The other thing the Dell sales rep told me is that Dell will not
prepartition
the HDs on its machines, so I expect the machine I will order shortly will
come with one 4GB Win98 partition.
I realize there are tools for repartitioning without losing the data, but
they either aren't guaranteed or cost money I think. So I just assume
re-intall Win98 from scratch myself after repartitioning if I have no data
of
my own to loser. It'll be good for the practice in case of a real HD
failure.
This question is only peripherally Linux-related, but I've never quite
understood how one is supposed to re-install Win95/98 from scratch on a
completely wiped partition using the "for distribution only with new PCs"
Win95/98 CDs. Some friends of mine who just bought an Apple G3 Powerbook
repartitioned their drive to install MkLinux and they said the the
re-install
of the MacOS took about 3 clicks. It was very easy.
It has always seemed much harder in the MS-Windows world. Someone pointed
out
to me that this is partially intentional to prevent pirating of MS-Windows,
something which isn't really a big problem for Apple and its MacOS. And
that
this is the reason for there being the special "only with new PCs" version.
But clearly one has to be able to do this with the computer for which that
copy of MS-Windows was purchased.
The problem I always run into is how to either boot from the CD (which
most,
or all?) PCs can't do, or how to boot from a floppy in such a way as to
recognize the CD-ROM drive (or DVD-ROM acting as a CD-ROM). Can anyone tell
me how easy this is to do, either in general or with an Inspiron (3200 with
DVD-ROM)? What's the basic idea?
The only time I've ever successfully done this was on a SCSI desktop
system,
and I had to install MS-DOS 6.22 and then a DOS SCSI driver (from an old
commercial SCSI package from Corel) in order to get access to the CD.
-Karl
------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
Karl Pfleger [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.stanford.edu/~kpfleger/
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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