THE FIRST PART IS JUST A STORY EXPLAINING HOW IT HAPPENED:
Hi, I have an old, slow computer that is really corrupted. I managed to avoid formatting the C drive many times in the past by reinstalling Windows and copying missing files from the Windows CD, etc.
However, I recently reinstalled Windows 98 again but this time it didnt work. After I reinstalled Windows 98, it got stuck at a blue screen, but I could still move the mouse. When I pressed Ctrl-Alt-Del, the screen suddenly looked very strange with colourful squares and flashing colours... So I pressed the Computer's restart button. The same thing happened with Safe mode, but I didn't try Ctrl-Alt-Del this time.
Then I went into DOS mode and the files and directories were still there. I typed Win in C:, but it said himem.sys was missing, even though it was in the Windows folder. I copied himem.sys and config.sys into multiple Windows subfolders, and typed Win again but it still didnt work. Then I restarted using the Computer's restart button and let it load Windows. It froze, and the mouse cursor was visible but frozen, so I pressed Ctrl-Alt-Del and it restarted.
This time, I went into DOS using a boot disk because it couldn't boot from the C drive. When I used the DIR command in C:, there were only a few folders there and all of them were corrupted. They all had strange ASCII names like ñ¥ä etc. There wasn't even a Windows folder. Obviously, my C drive is screwed beyond repair this time. I tried Scandisk but it said there was an error in the C drive, something to do with the FAT thing...
THIS IS WHAT I NEED HELP WITH:
I need to format my C drive and reinstall Windows 98. Can someone please give me step by step instructions on how to format my C drive, and then reinstall Windows 98? If possible, please tell me how to install the necessary drivers, unless Windows does it automatically?
The following is just for your information:
I have a Windows 98 boot disk with DOS and CDROM drivers. I have a Windows 98 installation CD. I cannot get into Windows (as can be read in the story above), but I can get into DOS using the Boot disk. Also, I have the driver CDs for the sound card (not sure, but something like A3D) and the video card (SiS 6326). My computer is a PII 233mhz with 160mb SDram, and the C drive has a capacity of 3.2GB (it currently has about 500MB of free space).
THANKS!
By the way, I also have a Windows XP CD. I'm assuming that my computer is too slow/old to handle this OS, but if it is highly worth considering, please say so.
