Win 98 to floppy for install

[IDF]

what do I need to do to copy windows 98 of cd onto floppies? My old laptop has no cd drive, nor option in Bios to boot from network, I know I need about 70 floppies

thanx,

idf

[stoo_pid]

Don't know if this will help but you can try zipping it to multiple disks, (assuming you have access to a PC with both a CD & floppy drive).

Put your 1st floppy disk in the drive & zip the contents of the CD to your floppy drive; when the first disk is full it should ask you to put the second disk in & so on.  If it's successful you can then unzip the contents to your laptop's hard drive, starting with disk 1.

If you do try this method do make sure the disks are good quality - just 1 suspect disk will stuff-up the whole thing.  Don't forget to number them either...

[scatman]

Hah, good luck with that.

Wouldn't it be easier to buy an external CD drive? shouldn't cost much.

[Kev_UK]

I believe you can pick up an old cd drive for about �12 and theyre easy to install.

[dodgyshirt]

How do you unzip ZIP files on an empty HDD stoo_pid

[samrbrimble]

Try to avoid the above if possible, as suggested before, it can be risky and also it would take far too much time.

One thing that might help is you creating a partition on your hard drive just for the setup files, then you could format the hard drive (remembering not to format the partition) and then delete the setup files afterwards.
To set up new partitions, I would recommend the new Norton package they have recently released. One thing I will warn you off though is that messing around with partitions can be dangerous if you haven�t backed up your data. Do that and then everything will be fine.

Another suggestion that might help is installing Windows 95 (I believe that the setup files for this require less disks) and then upgrading by transferring the windows 98 setup files.

I know that the above would work perfectly with a CD-Rom, but if you could transfer the files by another laptop using a serial cable (that would take time) or by any other transfer method, it would be recommended.

But the best idea would be to just upgrade your laptop with a new cd-rom and a firmware update for your bios. Failing this, there is a wide range of extremely cheap laptops that would run Windows 98 with have CD-Rom drives installed. Ebay can do some really good deals. 

Good luck and I hope this helps.

Another suggestion that might help is installing windows 95 (I believe that the setup files for this require less disks) and then upgrading by transfering the windows 98 setup files.

I know that the above would work perfectly with a cd-rom, but if you could transfer the files by another laptop using a serial cable (that would take time) or by any other transfer methord, it would be reccomend.

Good luck and I hope this helps.

[Bernardw]

Another alternative would be to remove your hard drive and put it in a computer that has a removable drive tray, then load win 98 on it. After that return it to your laptop. I did this for a friend once, certainly far easier than trying to put on to a load of floppies.

If you don't have an operating system on yet you may not get it to recognize an ecternal CD drive, but certainly get one when it's up and running again.