Help! laptop probs

[abfab04]

I'm pretty good with computers, but have never dealt with techie, systems stuff until now.

Someone gave me a Dell Lattitude CP233ST laptop. I know its old and slow by today's standards, but I'm only using it for occasional internet use, so it should be ok for that.

I installed Win 98 over the existing Win 95, but found a lot of leftover 95 files and other old software, so I want to format the drive and reinstall it from scratch, possibly with Win 2K if it can handle it. I have two problems though...

1) The computer is not no longer starting up properly. It was great for a while, but perhaps while doing too much cleaning up of old files I deleted something I shouldn't have... I'm not sure. After loading Win 98, I can see the desktop but there are no icons and the hourglass won't go away. My only option seems to be shutting down.

2) After formatting the drive, how can I get the computer to recognize the CD drive and an exe installation file? I've never formatted a computer before and the only instructions I've seen are using the original system disks, but not this method.

Any advise to get me back up and running would be very helpful.

thanks.

 

[The_Other_One]

Find yourself a Windows 98 boot disk, or try and get the machine setup to boot from the CD, if capable. It should ask you if you want to load CD drivers(yes, I know it's odd, even if you boot from the CD, you must still load drivers )

Seeing as you formatted it, that should be all you need to do. Oh, and as for loading over 95...NEVER do that. I mean, you can upgrade, but I honestly can't ever think of a time an upgrade went smoothly for me...

 

[LaptopExtreme]

Yes, don't install over it or upgrade. Updates for fixes are no longer available too. As for getting it to boot off the Win98 CD for install, you'll have to go into bios and set the CDrom as the primary boot device (if it isn't already). You should definitely format it and install fresh.