formating help

[ravegirl]

ok, i need to reformat my pc.i have everything saved and uploaded that i want to keep. now, i just need to know what to do now.......i have a windows 98 cd, and a gateway restore disk . do i have to have a dos disk? will i be able to use my cd drive? i'm not sure what to do now, is there anyone that will help me?

 

[Latinababe]

Never used a dos disk all I done was saved my stuff and reformated then I used my gateway cd to add the things I needed.

You should be able to use your disk drive. I did with mine.

 

[Weird Harold]

i have a windows 98 cd, and a gateway restore disk . do i have to have a dos disk? will i be able to use my cd drive? i'm not sure what to do now, is there anyone that will help me?

It depands on why your "need to reformat" (you probably actually don't need to, it's just easier than finding the problem) and what's on the Gateway Restore disk.

The first thing I would do is check to see if you can boot from your CD with eiher of the two CDs -- the Windows 98 disk should be bootable.

You'll probably have to go into the BIOS setup and put the CD-Rom drive first in the boot sequence if just puting the disk in the drive and rebooting doesn't start your from the CD.

If you can boot from the Gateway Restore CD, do that and follow the intructions for a full restore.

If you have to boot from the Windows CD first, then you'll probably need to make and emergency boot disk (under Add/Remove progams in the control panel) and manually reformat the drive first because the Windows 98 CD won't do anything if it detects newer proram files -- i.e. online updates -- that what it would install.

If you can't boot from either disk, then you'll definitely need to make an emergency boot disk -- it will give you a choice of booting with or without CD-ROM support.

It might be best if you found a nerd in your area that can help with hands-on your machine -- this is the kind of project that if you have problems in the middle of it, online support is hard to manage.

 

[ravegirl]

thank you both for your help.it turned out i could write over windows 98 and that fixed all the problems i was having. and i didn't even have to save all my stuff after, it was all still there.