Bad write to c: on any install

Check your drive for errors - use thorough check, defragment it, clean the registry (use regclean from microsoft), and try again. I've quite often had 'unable to write to drive c' errors which don't happen after you've rearranged the data with defrag.

If you've got junk data, you should delete it. This is a good indication that somewhere along the line something has gone majorly wrong. If you've just installed 95, the best thing to do would be to do a full format with bad sector checks (format c: /u /c) from a bootable floppy. Then if no errors come up, reinstall windows. Your hard drive may have been upset by something. You shouldn't get bad data so soon after installing.

I have dozens of large programs (many shareware with code keys) that would be lost in a system reformat so thats really out of the question. I think maybe it would help if I knew the correct order to instal win95 to end up with the full instal of 4.0SP1.
is it install win 95, unstall 3.0, uninstal 4.0, reinstall win 95, uninstal ie3.0, instal 4.0SP1? I dont think I uninstalled 3.0 from the reinstall before I added 4.0

I think we're making this out to be a big deal when it isn't.  You have 2 things you can do:

Reboot to DOS:

Try just re-installing Win95 first, then the latest IE.  You don't have uninstall stuff before doing that.  Your CDROM driver in DOS must be functioning, so you can run the setup.exe on the CDROM.  Then download the latest IE, so there is no question of versions and install it.

OR

Wait until Win98 and then install that OS--- you'll get all of the latest drivers and service packs combined, plus the new stuff.  Sounds like you have too many steps to do and that's the problem...


If it works, let us know and request that I post this as the answer...

steve

Your solution was perfect. The problem was not only that I was trying to fix too much at once only to find more trouble, I also had a driver problem. The win95 setup disk forces MS-DOS compatibility and when i remove the ATAPI reference in config.sys to optimize my system (after thinking everything was a-ok)I failed to replace it with a new system driver. I'm in the process now of finding the correct driver for my disk and the verbage to use in place of the ms-dos driver reference. Thanks for opening my eyes.