Hello,

I need to install MS WIN 95 (okay, no snickers, please) on an old Compaq Prolinea 590. The problem, though, is that the hard drive was reformatted; there is no OS currently on the hard drive. Furthermore, I do not have the original floppies, CDROMs, or owner's manual that came with this PC. All I have is a CDROM with Win 95 and one DOS bootable floppy someone made for another PC. I have been able to boot this PC using this bootable floppy. I mean, I get a DOS prompt, but not sure where to go from there, and as I said the bootable floppy was actually made for another machine. The CDROM drive on this PC is an internal one made by Matshita, model number 574, but I have no idea if this was original or added later.

I have to somehow get this darn machine to see that it has a CDROM Drive, which, of course, it doesn't know about at this point, but I know that it worked in the past. I looked around a little on the internet for CDROM drivers -- guess that's what I need -- and I saw several at Compaq, et al., but I'm really confused about which one to use and how/where to load it, syntax, etc. What witchcraft is necessary to get the PC to see that it has a CDROM drive?! All documentation I could find on line seems to suggest that I have to have an OS in order to use the CDROM drive, but I can't install the OS without the CDROM drive. Ughhhh!!!

Would greatly appreciate any feedback on how to get this rascal working.

Thanks.

Morrisette

hello morrisette
were you ever able to fix your computer. i'm going through the same problem except i can't find the driver for my sony cdu511. you might want to try devicedriver.com it didn't work for me but you might have better luck.
adam

blimey thats an old post to reply to M8, did you try booting with a Win 98 boot floppy and then at the a prompt navigate to the D drive?

CD D/

D:/setup.exe

assuming D is the CD drive, with the windows CD in.

or just change the bios setup to boot from the CD drive instead of the C drive, change it back after installation ;)

Cheers

You need to aquire a copy of DOS 6.1 (three disk set) and start over. The Disks will prompt you through the process which will have you reformat the drive (working in accordance with the computers bios) then ask if you want cdrom support. You answer yes, and dos 6.1 creates a temporary dos partition. When you install 95, windows will auto detect the cdrom and should assign it as Drive D. This processs is a pain, but it has always worked for me. Remember, Windows 95 still retains a dos partition, where current versions of windows do not. If you can't borrow the disks for a friend, have someone download them from the net.
Hope this helps!
Jim