Installing windows 95

[radiovet]

I bought an old IBM computer with no O/S. I'm trying to install w95. It is brand new with a floppy boot disk. My problem is the it boots up, then gives me a "INVALID DISK, REPLACE AND STRIKE ANY KEY" message. It then gives me a diagram to load the floppy. I then STILL get the message. It winds up doing nothing but flashing an insertion point but the keyboard has no effect. Any advice?... :?

[Mich]

Go here and make a new boot disk: http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm

1) download and save the file (to the desktop preferrably)
2) run the downloaded program (insert blank floppy in drive, it will make the boot disk)
3) DO NOT just download the file to a floppy because the file is not the boot disk it just creates it.

[radiovet]

IT WORKED!!! Thank you. But I ran into another wall. :? It is asking me to create a boot partition for MS-DOS. :roll: Any ideas? Thank you for your time. I have two 7 year olds (twins) that will apreciate it once it's up and running.

[Mich]

when you boot with the floppy, at the menu press shift+f5 to get a command prompt, at the prompt type: fdisk

(sorry if these aren't 'exact' instructions i haven't done it in awhile)

1) the fdisk program will open, there should be a view all partitions if there are no partitions then continue to step 3

2) if there are partitions on the driven then delete them. Press the button that corresponds with 'delete' then press the corresponding partition number until you have deleted all partitions then go to step 3

3) from the menu select 'create primary dos partition', say yes to enabling large drive formatting, next pick the size of the partition (if its a plaything then just use the maximum size of the hard drive), when finished, (not sure if you reboot) but get back to a command prompt and type: format c:

now reboot again with the boot disk and install windows

[whoozhe]

Usually the Start Up disk contains a help file.
This is a DOS based file and can only be run via the keyboard.
To access the menu press down the Alt key plus the underlined letter in the menu. eg for file your would press the alt and f keys. Once a menu drops down you can navigate it by using the keyboard arrow keys.
This help file has all the information on using all the tools including fdisk and formatting a drive.
Your concern over seeing the DOS petition message is undertandable but win95 is atually an overlay grahical interface (GUI) for the DOS system so the disk is formatted for DOS.