Formatting old windows 98 laptop.
January 23rd, 2020
How would I got about formatting the laptop? I do not have any windows CDs except vista but I highly doubt that would even boot on this laptop tbh.
if youll provide me more info on this laptop
(processor & ammount of ram) ill be able to
determine what OS is best for it ,considering
its runnin win98 i assume this laptop is from 1998 or 99
and have a slow pentium 2 or 3 processor with 64-128mb of ram,maybe 98 would be best for it but i cant tell ya for sure without knowing the specs
anyhows,for now ill answer the Q , lets say your gonna
reinstall windows 98, first thing you need to do is to get yourself
a win98 cd , search for it in the apps section and find an original iso
thats bootable (better get the second edition),now youll need
this bootdisk iso aswell http://www.allbootdisks.com/download/iso.html
get Win98SE_bootdisk.iso , use imgburn to burn the 2 isos
(bootdisk and the 98 one) , put in the bootdisk cd in your laptop
drive and boot from it (note:you must configure the bios
boot device order properly for this to work) , after booting
it youll get a menu , select the 1st option (start computer with cdrom support)
after its done loading,youll see this message
“the diagnostic tools were sucessfully loaded to drive X”
the X can vary of course,now you need to get yourself
into that drive (its a virtual temporary ram drive
that contains some useful utils) , to get into it
type drive: and hit enter , now use the useful format utility
by typing format c: and hitting enter,youll be asked for confirmation
press y and hit enter then it will clear the contents of the main system partition
(C drive) , after that is done take out the cd and insert the win98 one
then restart by holding the ctrl/alt/del keys and it will boot from it
then again youll see a menu,select boot from cdrom–>start windows setup
and enjoy the ride , thats about it , of course you might need
drivers for some of the hardware,i’m sure you already have those handy
but if not you can use some driver backup software or get em
from the manufacturer site (if it still exists that is ) goodluck
it have a CD drive ?
try microXP or tinyXP (running tinyXP beast on a PII lappy with 64mb ram)
or get windows 98 in the appz section
it seems like its later than 98, just the people who sold me it only had windows 98.
Anyways! I was thinking maybe Ubuntu would be good for it??
I believe the computer HAD originally 512mb ram but I upgraded it with a stick of 256mb in 2003
Xubuntu is made for older machines, might want to try that
Well I just downloaded the ISO but i forget, what program is good for burning cds/dvds and ISO images (bootable and non bootable)
IMGburn will do it
Oh cool thank you very very much for all your help guys, my old computer which was sitting in the corner of my guest room is now hooked up with a 250gb ext HDD being used as a backup drive for my network. I really appreciate you helping me.