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Written by RotoSequence
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Follow RotoSequence on his harrowing journey into the realm of hard
disk drive formatting, picky devices, and the Windows Installer.
Project WRAPI (Windows Reinstallation and Program Installing)
This is the first of three articles of the formatting, partitioning,
and resinstallation of the operating systems and programs of the home
computers (Project WRAPI)
In addition to my main PC, several other computers are in this house.
These machines have been under some pretty nasty abuse over their years
of operation. Windows 98 is now bloated, and crashes are frequent and
extremely inconvenient. Its time to reformat the HDD.
I am starting with my personal E-machine/old school gaming PC. This old
Dell Optiplex Gn+ has certainly seen better times. Subsequently, I am
going to wipe the slate clean and let it live a happier new life.
This old bugger is so filled up with junk that it has a hard time
running anything nowadays. So, when I started trying to make it run
some disk checking programs, I immediatly encountered problems. The
first version of Western Digital's hard drive boot disk maker ran
smoothly. Unfortunately, the disk is incompatable with my drive.
Frustrated, I got an older version, as they reccomended. So, the ZIP
file was downloaded, and the file extracted. I than followed a
fun little chain of events.
1. Boot up Application.
2. Discover a quant little dos menu.
3. Menu is an end users licence agreement.
4. Read through typical EULA junk.
5. "We will not be held accountable for the inevitable destruction of
your hard drive... ...you agree to give us your computer, your soul,
and your firstborn son..."
6. Do you accept?
7. Yes.
8. Unexpected and irrecoverable error.
9. WTH!?
10. Try again.
11. Ditto with number eight.
12. Ditto with number nine.
13. Repeat steps 1-9 three times.
14. Smack the computer really hard in the side.
Things had not started smoothly; quite unfortunate for the little
machine, since if my formatting attempt doesnt work, I plan on
introducing the hard drive to my good friend thermite two. Ok, time for
plan B. Since Microsoft was kind enough to make the nifty little create
boot disk function, I decided to forget checking for drive problems,
and just take the plunge into F-disk. Another interesting little chain
of events ensued.
1. Get into boot disk utility.
2. Choose create boot disk.
3. Insert blank floppy.
4. Click create boot disk.
5. "Please insert Windows 98 disk."
6. I insert Windows 98 disk.
7. "Windows 98 disk not found."
8. Try again.
9. "Windows 98 disk not found."
10. Cursing, and try again.
11. Windows 98 disk not found."
12. Major cursing, and try again.
13. "Windows 98 disk not found."
14. Violent slap on the computer's CD rom drive area that causes old CRT to flicker.
15. Stop and rethink my options.
This was definitely not proceeding as planned. Some issues were
evidently present that needed ironing out. The question was, how to
make them even enough to apply the iron. The first thing I decided to
check was the CD-ROM drive. After popping in a newer, better drive,
hello! It works. Well, the drive does anyway. So, I inserted the floppy
and CD-ROM into their respective drives. Guess what happened
next. Once again, I got the same error. "Please insert Windows 98
CD-ROM." And then, something clicked. I'm using a Windows 98 Second
Edition CD-ROM, when my installation is Windows 98 FIRST edition. And
so, after fealing like an idiot for a few moments, I went to
www.bootdisk.com, and downloaded a 98 SE Boot Disk drive image. And
finally, the real fun begins...
Well, things just didnt want to go well. I managed to delete and then
install a new primary DOS partition for Windows... And then formatting
became a pain in the ass! C:Format C:\s "Invalid media." Okay...
C:\Format C:\s "Invalid Media." Argh. C:\Format C:\s "Invalid Media."
"ok" Warning: Formatting the hard drive will cause loss of all data.
What!? Ok... Continue? "Y" And so, the hard drive was formatted. So, I
insert Windows 98 SE CD to finish instillation... A:/. What the crap!?
Bah! E:/ Setup.exe. "E drive cannot be read." BAH! And so, the last two
sentences were repeated three times with the same results. Something
had obviously gone wrong. Solution? It would seem that the IDE
controller on the motherboard had decided to up and die on me. Crap.
What seemed like such a simple task, reformatting the Hard Drive and
reinstalling the OS, was turning into a major mess. Nothing wanted to
work, and things at this point it did not appear to be in any position
to improve.
I decided to take a fifteen minute break to calm down and figure out
what to do. I knew that the board I had been trying to use had failed
on me, so it could not be used. Obviously, I needed a different one.
Where would I get a new board for a Pentium 1 200 MHZ for Dell Otiplex
Series computers? I then remembered the extra computer that no one ever
uses that had a board that was a lot better than the previous one.
Hello! And so, a motherboard swap was done. Once the board was out, it
was a simple slide in to put it in its place. I then took the old 64
Megabyte sticks from the dead motherboard and installed them in the new
system. Now that that had been finished, it was time to close the
computer up and turn her on.
1. Press power button.
2. Nothing.
3. DAMNIT, WHAT NOW!?
4. Look inside of case.
5. Realize that I had not attached the power and reset buttons to the motherboard.
6. Oops
7. Fiddle with the cables
8. Close up case.
9. Power
10. Booting.
11. YES!
After so many problems, issues, and unfortunate events throwing my
plans awry, I decided to start from scratch and restart the process
with a format using a [i]working[/i] motherboard.
1. Boot
2. Start computer with CD-Rom support.
3. Load up Boot floppy files...
4. Load RAM drive
5. A: prompt
6. A:/Fdisk
7. Select action to perform
8. "3" (Delete primary DOS partition)
9. WARNING: This will cause the loss of all the data you dont want. Are you sure you want to continue?
10. Yes.
11. "Primary Dos Partition Deleted. Press ESC to continue."
12. ESC
13. Select Action to perform.
14. 1 (Create primary DOS partition)
15. Do you want to use the whole drive?
16. Yes.
17. "Verifying drive integrity."
18. Partition created.
19 "Verifying drive integrity."
20. "You must restart your system before formatting this partition."
21. Reset Button
22. Boot
23. Start computer with CD-Rom support.
24. Load up Boot floppy files...
25. Load RAM drive
26. A: prompt
27. A:/C:
28. C:/Format C:/s
29. "Invalid media type reading drive C"
30. ARGH!
31. C:/Format C:\s
32. "Invalid media type reading drive C"
33. "Abort, Retry, Fail?"
34. f
35. "Warning: Format will cause loss of all data. Do you wish to continue?"
36. Ok, ummm, yes
37. Format begins.
38. 15 minutes later: 90%
39. 25 minutes later: 100%
40. Please restart your computer.
41. Reset Button.
42: Steps 1-5.
43. C:\Sys C:
44. Files copied.
45. C:/E:
46: E:/setup.exe
47. "Error reading media in drive E."
48. No, not again!
49. Notice Windows 98 CD on the desk.
50. Insert Windows 98 CD into CD-ROM drive
51. C:\E:
52. E:\setup.exe
53. Windows will now be installed on your machine.
54. HALELUJAH! (Or, NOOOOO! Depending on your OS affiliation)
Thank God, things were finally starting to go right. Now that Windows
was about to install, I prepared myself for the longest and most
annoying part of project WRAPI.
1. "Welcome to Windows 98! We have made several changes to make your life even more miserable than before.
2. Goody.
3. Begin installation.
4. "It will take between 29 and 39 days to install Windows. You may not
leave the entire time, or else it will start all over again."
5. Actually begin installlation.
6. "While windows installs, we will tell you about all the stuff that
we added to make life "easier" for you. (And by easier we mean
infinitely more difficult)."
7. Oh happy day.
8. "We integrated Internet Explorer to the operating system in order to
make file viewing easier than ever! With new features like back and
forward buttons, using Windows has never been simpler!"
9. Translation: We have taken the part of Windows that was actually
fairly reliable and tore it to bits in order to make your system
completely incompatable with NetScape and all other internet browsers,
replacing it with a clone of Spyglass' Internet browser that we made
into a horrificly buggy mess that was freely available to all and
integrated into the operating system, in order to achieve market
dominance without any significant effort on our part. Huge profits for
us, and an error filled mess for everyone else.
10. Repeat same types of mumo jumbo for four minutes
11. "You need to restart your computer."
12. Control Alternate Delete.
13. "Updating system registry."
14. Continue 13 for 20 minutes.
15. "You need to restart your computer."
16. Control Alternate delete.
17. Updating configuration settings.
18. Continue 17 for 25 minutes.
19. "You need to restart your computer."
20. Control Alternat Delete.
21. Now booting Windows for the first time.
22. "Please set clock"
23. Adjust clock by 55 minutes.
24. Boot into windows with 640 by 480 screen resolution and 16 colors.
25. Ewwww
Well, it was done. Windows was finally installed on the machine and in
working order. Aside from a few things. The graphics sucked, the system
had more holes in its secrity than swiss cheese, and Internet Explorer
was version 5.0. Time for a Windows Update! And so, I paid a visit to
Microsoft's Windows update page, and followed their instructions.
1. Scan for updates.
2. 36 updates available that you absolutely must have in order to
protect yourself from people who can easily destroy your machine at a
whim because of security issues that should have been ironed out when
the operating system was made.
3. Pick and install updates.
4. Warning; you need to download internet explorer 6.0 first!
5. Download Internet explorer 6.0
6. Repeat 6 for an hour and a half (Curse you dial up!)
7. Download Video Card Drivers simultaneously
8. Restart computer to finish installation of both devices.
9. Fifteen minutes of the system configuring itself.
10. Go back to Windows update.
11. Get all the other updates downloaded.
12. Repeat 11 for two and a half hours.
13. Restart computer.
Well, now the system was up to date, security was fixed, and Windows
was in perfect working order (By Microsoft standards, anyway). Of
course, Microsoft doesnt provide anything you actually want unless the
market for these things are lucrative or they would get sued if they
even thought about taking over that market. So, I installed McAffee
Virus Scan 8.0. Now that this had been finished, it was time to get
some stuff off the internet. Spybot Search and Destroy was downloaded
and installed, and then run. Couple of tracking cookies already? Yuck.
Next up, Google Toolbar. Thirty seconds later, Google Toolbar was up
and running. Now that I was good to go, I needed to get one more
application to finish my raw installation of Windows: MSN messenger.
1. Go to MSN.com
2. Click MSN messenger
3. Download oversized MSN messenger version 6.2
4. Repeat step three for an hour and a half.
5. Install MSN messenger.
6. Get rid of annoying startup configuration and tailor to my liking.
And so, it had been finished. Windows was ready to go, Internet is
fully functional, and I can chat with my friends and family all day
long. This project took all day, but it was certianly worth it to be
able to use this machine without errors, problems, or annoyances in any
real form. This was actually the first format I did on my own; I am
more of a hardware guru than a software one. This experience was
educational, and will make the reinstallation of Windows on my sister's
machine much easier and more efficient. I hope you enjoyed my slightly
satirical account of the formatting of my hard drive and installation
of Windows 98 Second Edition. Be sure to stop by Moditory.com later to
read part two!
::NOTE:: Most of the menus that I am quoting do not actually read like
I wrote. They are either approximate representations of what the menus
say, or gross exaggerations for the sake of being humorous. Although I
make Microsoft sound extremely evil, they arent really that bad. I
mean, come on! Where would we be without Microsoft Windows?
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