Originally Posted by hillbilyswife

whats an xp cd? and the only other drive i have is my cd writer. how do i get it to load on another drive. when i put a cd in the cdrom drive you can hear it running it just isn't doing anything.

He means your 98 CD because most ppl are on WinXP now. The advice of using the current HDD as a slave is excellent advice if you want that data.

Have you tried putting your Win98 CD in and booting up?

ok i put my windows 98 cd in and nothing. and i don't know what you mean by the current HDD as a slave. do you mean i need to get another hard drive and then load everything in there?

The Windows Cd that the operating system was installed from. You go to the store, buy another hard drive, open the computer case, disconnect the current har drive, connect the new hard drive, boot from the CD, install windows, turn off the computer, connect your old hard drive as a slave drive, reboot the computer from the new drive, open My Computer, see if it recognizes your old drive, if it does, double click your old drive and see if you can copy the contents to the new drive. Although, if you have no technical experience, and the data on the old drive is important and can't be lost, take it to CompUSA or another computer shop and pay them to do it.

Originally Posted by hillbilyswife

ok i put my windows 98 cd in and nothing. and i don't know what you mean by the current HDD as a slave. do you mean i need to get another hard drive and then load everything in there?

Yes, you possibly need a new Hard Drive installed with the one you are trying to boot to still in the PC Case as a Slave Drive.........you will be able to acess it's data if the data is intact, through the new Hard Drive, and then you can use the old Slave as a Back Up Drive.

PS...sorry Jazzman....posted at same time

no need to apologize cherie...

Hi,

Are you able to get into safe mode?

As the computer is booting, press the F8 key when you hear a beep or when you see "Starting Windows 98". Windows 98 users sometimes may find it easier to press and hold the left CTRL key as the computer is booting.

thanks but i can't get into windows i can't get into anything. i know what you're talking about putting the computer into the safe mode but i can't do anything to get into the safe mode. thanks

To get into the bios on your comp it is normaly F1, if pre "2000" it might be F10. Start tapping the F1 key as soon as power is applied, if no success power down- restart and start tapping the F10 key.

What OS does the comp you are useing have ? does it have a floppy drive ?

Your Windows98 CD - is it a compaq presario recovery CD or a MS cd? if it is a MS windows 98 cd does it have OEM written on it ?

i have a floppy drive but it doesn't light up when the computer starts so i don't think its even reading it. also i have a start up cd that came with my computer and i also have a original windows cd so i would assume it has OEM written on it. my computer came with windows 98se.

"What OS does the comp you are useing have ? does it have a floppy drive ?" I guess I worded that bad. On the comp that your are useing to post here on , what OS and does it have a floppy ?

Did you try tapping the F1 key as soon as comp was turn on till error message (do not stop tapping till error message) ? F10 key ?

{ok i put my windows 98 cd in and nothing} from your pri post, just what do you mean by nothing ? We must know just what happens for us to help. If we have to give a guess it will not help solving problem.

Did you try the start up CD ? What happens ' be precise' ?

{so i would assume it has OEM written on it. } it may or it may not ,look at it, makeing an assumtion does not help. If it hase OEM written on it , it should be a bootable cd other wise it likely is not bootable.

Remember we can not see your comp and must go by the info you give us, give us incomplete or bad infor, we will give advise based on that infor!