Toshiba Laptop Problem
 

My cousin has bought a second hand Toshiba Tecra 8000 for her son for Christmas.

However, it has two operating systems installed on it Win2000 and Win98. I think there's some kind of partition on the hard drive.

There are some copied utility disks with it, but I can't boot from the CD (pressing Esc+F1, F8 or F12).

The CD Drive works fine, and the machine works well once you've cleared the start up error, where the machine has an identity crisis regarding it's OS.

She's asked me to wipe the hard drive and reinstall Windows 95, then upgrade to 98 SE. My question is, can anyone please give me an idea of how to set up this machine from scratch? I'm not really sure if I have the right disks, but if anyone can point me in the right direction, it will make a little kid's Christmas.

Many thanks |santa|

A machine of Win98 vintage should have a floppy drive, and it may or may not be capable of booting from CD depending on the BIOS. Win95 and Win98 use three startup floppies to begin a clean install. I think I may have the Win98 floppies around here somewhere if you need them.

Thanks Toby :) I can change the BIOS to boot in any order, but no floppy drive available.

If you have a windows disk that is an install disk, you should be able to run the setup, and at the point where it asks where to install it, delete the existing partitions, then, choose to install on the drive at which point it should tell you that the partition needs to be created and ask if you want to use the full disk for the OS.

I would advise you install Win98SE rather than trying to upgrade from Win95.

Barring that, any newer windows CD that you have should be able to delete the partitions.

Also, the Tecra is a business series, so, you might have a little trouble getting all of the Toshiba drivers to work on win98 or might have to search around toshiba's site. They have a really good system for finding updates for old machines on their support site.

Don't go past win98SE, because with a PII 333, that thing won't do XP at all... maybe a nice copy of windows ME? (or the Beaker edition, Windows mimimimi!)

Alex

Thank you Chris :)
Thank you Alex :)

http://www.bootdisk.com/

You can get the free start up disks from here. Being you dont have a floppy just run the 98 tool and put the files on a floppy and then copy the files to a cd. Make sure you set your system to show all hidden files and folders. If you can get the machine to boot to the cd then just change to the cd directory and run fdisk and delete everything. You may have a small issue with deleteing the 2k partition as it will or could be ntfs if memory serves me you just need to go into the section on fdisk where it tells you to delete all non partitions or something like that. Once thats done, format the drive and you should be able to load the machine. If not and you can still boot to the cd, then boot to it again, make a directory on the hard drive named install or what ever you want. remove the boot disk cd and replace it with the OS install cd, copy the entire thing over to the new directory. Go to that directory and go to your windows directory if its 98 you are installing I think the directory is called win98, but its been a long time for me with that os. Anyway just type startup and it should install.
If you have any more problems give me a call I make house calls for traffic, as long as you are in new jersey and have heat in your house lol.

The tecra series came with a CDrom only -- no floppy unless you had the external docking connector.

From the windows CD on another machine, he could do:

setup.exe /o

to create the boot disks for almost any windows version.

Thanks juggernaut :)

Cheers Chris :)

EEWWWW .. lol I used that version some time back for a very short time, man was it bad. I agree, I have a PII 333 laptop and Win98 SE works great on it.

ronnie