Windows 95. Seriously

Jpat

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 28, 2020
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139
Hey there, Iam new to the forum, Ive been searching for old tech knowledge and i cant seam to find a good active forum so iam hoping someone can help me here

in the last few years ive been collecting old tech, Ti comouters, NES, Segas, and especial pentium 2s.

i picked up a sweet HP computer with no hard drive. it turns on and functions that way.

Anyway i got a used known working hard drive and a brand new old stock copy of windows 95. i set the bios, stick the windows95 disk in and all i get is a blank screen. i can boot on a win95 boot disk but thats where my limited knowledge stops.

I guess what iam asking is do i need to install msdos first, Then windows 95?

Jeez i hope someone knows!

Thanks alot!

The HP in question
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My dell Pentium 2 with voodoo3 and soundblaster. Killing doom and quake 2:cool:
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Is cd set as first boot device and the ide master\slave jumpers set correctly? No you don't need to install dos first.
 
Is cd set as first boot device and the ide master\slave jumpers set correctly? No you don't need to install dos first.
Ah! ill have to re check and adjust tomorow. i think my jumpers could be wrong. ill take the ide cables right off and put 2 indevidual ones on and try too.

Thank you!
 
Holy crap that's deep in the old memory bank.

I recall always needing a floppy boot disk. Something about bios not supporting boot from cd?

I don't believe I could boot from cd until xp. In fact I remember being excited about being able to toss my old floppys
 
Holy crap that's deep in the old memory bank.

I recall always needing a floppy boot disk. Something about bios not supporting boot from cd?

I don't believe I could boot from cd until xp. In fact I remember being excited about being able to toss my old floppys

This is the latest version of win95 with USB and didnt come with a bootdisk, i hope it doesnt need one but i got one incase

i can set my boot to cd i seen the option but didnt try it

Thanks for the reply! i like old junk
 
It's way easier to boot with a windows 98 boot disk. Then run the installer off the CD after. Male sure the boot disk you use has smartdrv included to speed up the process (iirc)
Theres another option! i dont have one but i can find one
Better question, who still has a functional floppy drive?
i think i have 8, its great because i can get data from my phone to my windows xp, Then to floppy to my win95
 
It's way easier to boot with a windows 98 boot disk. Then run the installer off the CD after. Male sure the boot disk you use has smartdrv included to speed up the process (iirc)
THIS.

I used to have one rig with every OS from my personal experience, but had to downsize. I don't have any rigs with anything before Windows 98se anymore....but I still have working rigs of everything newer.
 
Win95 is a bit before my time. But you certainly found a good community in which to ask your question.

Better question, who still has a functional floppy drive?
Me. I like old junk too. Just last weekend I was testing old DDR1 modules with MemTest86 from floppies in my newly assembled nForce2 rig.
 
i dont have a pc newer than XP, i have an xbox one that was gifted to me thats never been plugged in
 
Win95 is a bit before my time. But you certainly found a good community in which to ask your question.

Me. I like old junk too. Just last weekend I was testing old DDR1 modules with MemTest86 from floppies in my newly assembled nForce2 rig.

nForce2? Jelly. I won't ask any other questions to keep the topic on hand.
 
Threads like this make me sad when I think about all the gear I recycled over the years.
i think i have 8, its great because i can get data from my phone to my windows xp, Then to floppy to my win95
Can I ask what you might have on your phone, under 1.4MB that you want on a Windows 95 desktop?

Very sorry to derail the thread, but questions!
 
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Threads like this make me sad when I think about all the gear I recycled over the years.

Can I ask what you might have on your phone, under 1.4MB that you want on a Windows 95 desktop?

Very sorry to derail the thread, but questions!

A windows boot disk.
 
Threads like this make me sad when I think about all the gear I recycled over the years.

Can I ask what you might have on your phone, under 1.4MB that you want on a Windows 95 desktop?

Very sorry to derail the thread, but questions!
dont worry about asking questions its all great stuff i love discussing

i use my phone to download game files and such, from the internet like a wallpaper, programs that fit. Games like commander keen fit. its great for drivers Updates for doom

i tried using CDs but new blank CDs are GARBAGE and either cant be read by my XP or the win95.

This Motherboard has usb so if the drivers work itll be alot easier
 
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Yano i never noticed the passage of time untill i realized the OS i typed middle school essays on is 25 years old.

And as far as recycling stuff, my mother had an IBM 5150. We threw it on the ground at the dump, ide knock my teeth out for it now
 
I remember Win95 having terrible USB support , and it not being until Win98 that USB finally worked right.
 
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I remember Win95 having terrible USB support , and it not being until Win98 that USB finally worked right.
Thats right, it worked on my dell win95 a few times then it decided it hated usb for no reason. Floppy drive never complains
 
i tried using CDs but new blank CDs are GARBAGE and either cant be read by my XP or the win95.

If it's an old cd drive, many of them were pretty pickey about the brand of cdr disk they would read. There also were speed issues....like if it was a 2x cdrom, you had to burn them at the slowest rate in your cdburner.
 
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Thats right, it worked on my dell win95 a few times then it decided it hated usb for no reason. Floppy drive never complains
I still an leery of USB devices from the Win95 experience. I've come to accept it for mice, keyboards, and flash drives, but that's about all I use it for!
 
Better question, who still has a functional floppy drive?
Got rid of my last 3.25" floppy drive back in 2010. I needed one for the PC I built in 2006 to setup my RAID. But now with UEFI you can even flash your BIOS with a USB stick.
 
And here I was last night just searching Ebay again for a DFI NF3 board to tinker with my Mobile A64 4000+ Newark S754 chip. The Biostar I have is mediocre at best. Of course DFI 754 boards are about as unicorn as it gets.
 
My complementary copy of Win 95 + Office 95(attended a MS seminar that gave these away as a swag prize) does mention that DOS is required. But I seem to remember installing later versions of 95 straight off the CD. As the OP's copy shows a 98 copyright date, thinking it should be bootable assuming the hardware allows boot from CD.

Also remember installing from a set of about 30 floppies. First attempt died on disk 28? when I answered yes to the "Do you want to install a printer?" prompt. No recovery possible. Had to start over with disk 1 after a HD format(which in those days took a while). To this day I avoid installing printer drivers as part of any OS install. I wait until the OS boots up on its own then install printer and other optional drivers.

I do have at least one 3.5" FD with cables in a box, just in case. Also have a USB FD for more modern computers.
 
i tried using CDs but new blank CDs are GARBAGE and either cant be read by my XP or the win95.
If it's an old cd drive, many of them were pretty pickey about the brand of cdr disk they would read. There also were speed issues....like if it was a 2x cdrom, you had to burn them at the slowest rate in your cdburner.
^^ that is my thinking as well. Perhaps change the drive. Modern Verbatim 52x disks seem to be OK in my WinXP systems.

Not sure how this pertains to the blank media issue but I do know the MRW standard did not start until about 2004 and those drives' firmware did not natively support WinXP and earlier. Experienced this first hand while building a Win98se rig a while back. Seriously wonky CD drive only intermittently seen by the BIOS. Surprised it worked at all. Traced it down to the 2008 era Lite On drive. Switched to a 'high speed' HP re-writer drive from 1999 and all is right as rain. Hard to believe I paid near $300 for that thing but at the time burning your own music CDs was a fairly big deal.
 
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^^ that is my thinking as well. Perhaps change the drive.

Not sure how this pertains to the blank media issue but I do know the MRW standard did not start until about 2004 and those drives' firmware did not natively support WinXP and earlier. Experienced this first while building a Win98se rig a while back. Seriously wonky CD drive only intermittently seen by the BIOS. Surprised it worked at all. Traced it down to the 2008 era Lite On drive. Switched to a 'high speed' HP re-writer drive from 1999 and all is right as rain. Hard to believe I paid near $300 for that thing but at the time burning your own music CDs was a fairly big deal.
Thank you!

I remember a nerd in middle school handing out burnt copies of Eminems "The Slim Shady LP" with a black and white printed album cover. He didnt have rich parents just stupid ones, They were poor but he had a 800$ CD burner.

The CD drive in it is a 2006 so i swapped with a 1998 beige plain CD drive. Set to slave

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I put the Hard drive and CD drive on seperate ide cables

i checked the hard drives jumpers just because and it confused my caveman mind. i think chris angel mind freak drew up the instructions. Much too complicated for me i might just hit it with a rock

Mabye someone can check and see if iam jumpered right
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Heres some ram. 2 sticks of 128. Rocket ship numbers
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A processor with no fan, only a heat sink. it has thermal paste now
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Yeah, it took awhile for packet-write CDs to become standardized, and by that point larger USB drives were cheap.

They were mostly forgotten.
 
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Wouldn't Windows 98 be period correct for a Pentium II anyway?

Oh definitly, pentium 2 came out a year before win98 i think, Pentium 2s did come with win95 at a point

But to realy main line nostalgia into my veins i like windows 95, next one will be 98. i have a pentium 3 in the tickle trunk
 
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