Windows 3.11, or 95 will not install........

Do you have plug and play enabled in the computers BIOS setup? Do you have Virus Check enabled in BIOS setup? If so disable both and try installation again and let me know what happens.


Mike

See
http://support.microsoft.com/support/tshoot/tshooterlist.asp?PR=w95
Windows 95: Can't INSTALL Windows 95? We Can Help!

follow the troubleshooter.

lemme know
Bud

is the rest of the harddrive formated?  if not format it.  Also what other hardware is in your system?

I bet if you made that partition about 850mb instead of 2gig and installed Win95 on it you would have better luck.

Brentman, what's the difference if he has a fat16 2gb partition or a fat16 850mb partition to install Windows on?

Mike

I tried to submit this as an answer...please treat it as such

Ok, I hate to suggest this but it is sometimes necessary to get windows 95 to set up initially..
Two Options:
(I).
1. Remove all devices except the necessary ones. (i.e. Leave only the controller board(for the hard drive, CDROM, and mouse) and the video card.
2. Install Win95... once this is accomplished install the other devices you need one by one and see if any of them cause your system to hang.. If one does then it is the culprit.

Notes: This sounds to me like you may have an IRQ conflict. You might even need to go into your bios and disable one of your Com Ports(normally Com 2). This is the port that an internal Modem is usually set to by default. Sound Cards can sometimes wreak the same type of havok. Network cards can initiate problems due to buffer addresses.
 
I only use option #1 when other methods have failed.

(II).
You might also try modifying some of your CMOS setting that relate to RAM speed....i.e. load the safe settings and then try again.
Or...disable the internal and external cache.

Conclusion:
The most likely cause for this problem may well be a device confict. But, it can not hurt to try and modify the CMOS to a less than optimal state to make sure you are not overtaxing the RAM, CPU or BUS before you pull the devices out for option #1.

Good luck,
John C. Cook

To Brentman,
Win 95...even the older versions will see a 2G partition just fine. This should not, as mikecr pointed out, have caused the symptons that rookie1 is experiencing.

My 2 cents :-}

John C. Cook

Changing the partition to 850MB didn't help. In the bios, there is an option called pnp/pci configuration, but I don't see anyplace to disable the pnp. Anyone familiar with this type og Bios?  Thanks

Ok,
I realise that stripping your system down to bare devices is a drastic measure....but I've seen many times when it was the ONLY way to get win95 installed..But, anyway....
Questions:
what type of cards are installed in your system
Modem?(what is the namebrand)
Soundcard?    "
Network Card? "
SCSI Card?    "
Video Card?   "
How much Ram?
What type of processor?
Anything extra we should know about?
Were you having problems before trying to install Win95.
Did you try disabling your internal and external(L2) cache?


Make sure your config sys is almost bare...
It can have Himem.sys, Emm386, and your CDROM (sys) drive as a minimum.
Don't load smartdrive from the autoexec.bat...
********************
Very important...as someone mentioned above make sure that the Boot sector anti virus check is turned off in the bios(it is usually OFF by default).
*********************

Lastly - if none of the 'cures' we have mentioned works...
take a chance and try the bare system install :->

Good Luck
John C. Cook

Do you have a listing for plug and play operating system? If you do change it manual or something else that is listed. Have you checked to see if virus scan is Bios was enabled?


Mike

See
      http://support.microsoft.com/support/tshoot/tshooterlist.asp?PR=w95 
      Windows 95: Can't INSTALL Windows 95? We Can Help!

      follow the troubleshooter.

      lemme know

See Setup Problems at
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Troy/6883/

      Bud

It seems the solution to this problem was to disable either the internal or external cache...or both.  It continues to hang if they are both enabled.....Anyone know why????  This machine is a Pentium-S 200mhz, with 132MB of RAM.  Before I tried this solution, I pulled all non-essential cards and the virus warning was disabled, but had the same result........Also on a curious note, why would NT Workstation 4.0 install o.k.?  I would appreciate any insight into these questions and thank you very much to everyone who gave me their ideas to try.......John Cook, how do I give you the points for your "comment" vs. being submitted as a proposed answer????

I belive the only way for me to get the points for the response would be if I had been able to submit it as an answer..Someone else here may be able to say if this is correct or not.

Anyway... with regards to the disabling of your cache allowing the Win95 setup to work....

'Windoze' 95 is an extreamly memory intensive OS...It will tax your system much more than even 'Windoze' NT. So any speed problem will be more evident when using win95(IMHO).

Concerns:
This kind of problem is usually seen when a CPU has been overclocked. That is, the bus speed or the CPU multiplier has been increased to make the CPU run faster than it was rated.
The cache, at the faster speeds, is either filling up and thus losing info or is having propagation delay problems(data bits available either before of after the clocking siganl is present to stobe them through).

possible solutions:

A permanent solution, though undesireable, may be to Underclock your CPU... i.e.  set either the bus speed(less desirable) to a lower frequency or reduce the CPU Multiplier(better of the two).Maybe setting the CPU to a 166 and then re-enabling both of the cache seetings will help. This can be done by changing jumper settings on the motherboard.

Is it possible that the CPU has been overclocked? Re-marked as a 200Mhz CPU from a 166?

You might also check the RAMSPEED setting also called refresh rate in some bios sets. The refresh rate is the cycle time for revitalizing the data in the dynamic ram. If this 'refresh' does not happen often enough data bits will be lost before the next cycle. Try setting this option to a slower rate and see if you still have any problems.

Conclusions:
If you have to run with only one of the cache settings enabled run some tests to see which gives you the best overall performance. In my experience the external cache enabled seems to give the best results.

Good luck,
John C. Cook

p.s. thank you for concerning yourself with the points..If I don't get them don't fret....I am glad I could help.

I've been working with a fellow who has a similar problem.
We tried everything. Then tried another harddrive. That did it.
Do you have another Hdd to try it on.

Bud

Thanks for the links smeebud, but I think I should re-open the question and let John Cook submit an "answer" again, so he can have the 100 pts.  I was seriously thinking of trying another hd, but hated to waste a 6GB one if I didn't have to....Again thnaks for all the help.......