how do you put cd driver on boot disk, help pleeease!!

[rockhard]

Have come to the conclusion that my system has virus on it but has removed and corrupted some of my system files so i am going to have to fdisk my hd and reformat.
Can anyone tell me how you install windows from cd when you dont know how to get cd drive recognised in native dos?
I have a driver disk i got with cd but when i run this it cant find dos directory for mscdex. Is there any way round this?

Any help/advice would be most appreciated.


Rockhard

 

[Rup]

There should be a copy of MSCDEX in your \windows\command directory (or whatever you happen to call it). If I understand you correctly, making a c:\dos and putting mscdex in there might help the driver disk to work on its own.

Otherwise, make yourself a nice clean boot disk (or, if you really think you've got a virus, get a friend to make one for you). Then copy the driver from the driver disk, and make config.sys along the lines of:

device=a:\cddriver.sys

It may need a few options to say what IRQ, etc., if you've got a really old CD... but if it's IDE, then you can probably get away without. You'll also want mscdex.exe and format.com from \windows\command, and probably sys.com too (I'm not sure if format still needs it).

Now reboot from your floppy. Have a look to see what device name your CD driver gave the drive (probably MSCD001 or HITIDE01 or something) and type:

mscdex /d:<device name>

and you should get your CD drive on the next available drive letter. Reformat your drive:

format c: /u/s

Now if you can afford the space, I'd seriously recommend putting the Win95 install set on your HDD (also saves a lot of messing around with CD drivers during the installation reboots). So make a directory (e.g. \win95i) and copy \win95 on your cd to it (you don't need the subdirectories if you have them). If your CD is NOT ide, you'll also need to copy the driver and config.sys to your hard-drive (changing the path in config.sys), but that's no longer important for the install.

You can now go to \win95i and run "setup", safe in the knowledge that you won't ever need to insert the windows CD again.

*HOWEVER* if you can find someone who knows what they're doing to come over and do all this for you, so much the better -- but watch over their shoulder and ask intelligent questions when they do. I am always of the opinion that (if you're probably backed up) you can't do your PC any serious harm and the best way to learn is to experiment yourself -- but I don't want any horror stories/death threats, please

Rup.

 

[rockhard]

Thanks v much m8

Much appreciated

Will give it a go (think i understand most of it?!)

Cheers,

Rockhard

 

[[GA] KillmachinE]

Dont forget to stick some important gear on that floppy, like Format.com and FDisk, otherwise you could find yourself with a newly fdisk'd HDD and no way to format it

------------------
[GA] KillmachinE
extreme@barrysworld.com



[This message has been edited by [GA] KillmachinE (edited 24 May 1999).]

 

[C4]

OK, this may already have been mentioned in that big paragraph thing b4, but I can't be arsed reading all that. If you insert the Windows CD-ROM into the drive, and press delete key when computer is frist re-booting, select the CD-ROM as first boot device, the CD has driver on it. it happened to me the other day.

C4

 

[Rup]

Some do, some don't. The early 95 CDs I saw didn't, and neither does my 98 upgrade (although that might be because it's an upgrade). Nor does NT4 full install (although NT5 betas will boot, AFAICR).

However, if he needs DOS drivers for his CD ROM it's unlikely that his BIOS would support booting from it.

AFAICS, it shouldn't be necessary to FDISK his drive if he's reinstalling the same OS -- but, yeah, it doesn't do any harm to have too many utils on that disk.

Rup.

 

[C4]

OK, point taken.

C4

 

[rockhard]

Cheers for your replys m8ys.
Much appreciated.

Rockhard