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Installing Win95 on an Acer
I've been trying to install win95 on an old Acer Acro 9713 that is going to
be handed off to some one that wants a first PC to play around with. The
problem is that this system is a proprietary one that came preloaded with
win 3.1. I decided to bypass the win3.1 install that uses the Acer CPR disk
and CD-ROM because for some reason it was not working. A 6.4GB hard drive
was added and I used a win95 boot disk with the Mitsumi CD-ROM drivers to
partition and format the hard drive. The BIOS can support a 2GB partition
because FDISK indicated a 2GB active primary DOS partition.
I created the phony files in the \windows directory to make 95 think it was
upgrading from 3.1. The setup seemed to proceed without any snags. That is
until 95 needed to restart to complete the setup after copying all the
required files to the hard drive. For some reason I got an "invalid system
disk" or "non-system disk error."
The question is why would this happen?
The machine would boot up fine after a format c: \s. It wasn't until win95
completed the first part of the install that this happened. It almost seems
as if the MBR was rewritten. I did a sys c: and re-booted. Then I got the
screen that asked you to boot in normal mode, safe mode etc. When either
safe mode or normal was selected it came back with a line that said
himem.sys, ifshlp.sys and dblbuff.sys were either missing or corrupt. I
know what himem.sys is for.
But what are the other files for and what do they have to do with win95
re-booting to complete an install?
I even copied the files from the CD-ROM disk to a directory I called
\setup95 and tried installing from the hard drive thinking that by some
slight chance the CD-ROM drive did not copy all the files properly. I got
the same result. I really wanted to avoid using that weird Acer CPR disk
because I thought that installing 95 from scratch on a clean drive would
pose less hassle. It does not seem to turning out that way. I've done at
least 6 installs on other systems using this same method with no problems.
Does anyone out there know what is going on?
be handed off to some one that wants a first PC to play around with. The
problem is that this system is a proprietary one that came preloaded with
win 3.1. I decided to bypass the win3.1 install that uses the Acer CPR disk
and CD-ROM because for some reason it was not working. A 6.4GB hard drive
was added and I used a win95 boot disk with the Mitsumi CD-ROM drivers to
partition and format the hard drive. The BIOS can support a 2GB partition
because FDISK indicated a 2GB active primary DOS partition.
I created the phony files in the \windows directory to make 95 think it was
upgrading from 3.1. The setup seemed to proceed without any snags. That is
until 95 needed to restart to complete the setup after copying all the
required files to the hard drive. For some reason I got an "invalid system
disk" or "non-system disk error."
The question is why would this happen?
The machine would boot up fine after a format c: \s. It wasn't until win95
completed the first part of the install that this happened. It almost seems
as if the MBR was rewritten. I did a sys c: and re-booted. Then I got the
screen that asked you to boot in normal mode, safe mode etc. When either
safe mode or normal was selected it came back with a line that said
himem.sys, ifshlp.sys and dblbuff.sys were either missing or corrupt. I
know what himem.sys is for.
But what are the other files for and what do they have to do with win95
re-booting to complete an install?
I even copied the files from the CD-ROM disk to a directory I called
\setup95 and tried installing from the hard drive thinking that by some
slight chance the CD-ROM drive did not copy all the files properly. I got
the same result. I really wanted to avoid using that weird Acer CPR disk
because I thought that installing 95 from scratch on a clean drive would
pose less hassle. It does not seem to turning out that way. I've done at
least 6 installs on other systems using this same method with no problems.
Does anyone out there know what is going on?
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Can you access the bios on the machine at boot up. (ie. does it give you the option to hit a key to enter the bios). If not I would suspect that the acer has a bios partion on the harddrive. Compaqs have the same where the bios is on a special partion and you need a diskette to boot the machine to change this information. If this is correct that would expalin why you get a invlaid disk error bacuse the bios dosen't save it's information about the hard disk size.
hope this helps,
Banyan99, MCSE
hope this helps,
Banyan99, MCSE
Invalid system disk means the boot sector is not initialized properly. I'd suggest you reformat the HD with the FORMAT on the WIN95 CD (you can copy that from elsewhere). Probably also use the FDISK on the CD to "clean up" the HD.
Thanks for the input so far but please read the ENTIRE question. There is more than one part. I got past the invalid system disk part. I just wanted to know why I got this eror when it booted to the c: prompt prior to the win95 setup?
The other portion of the question was why would I get an indication of missing or corrupt ifshlp.sys, dblbuff.sys and himem.sys files if they were copied straight from the win95 cd during the install? I've learned that win95 uses dblbuff.sys ,himem.sys. and ifshlp.sys when booting to safe mode. Thses files appear to be in the \windows directory of the c:\ drive. However the boot screen says they are either missing or corrupt. All the win95 .cab files were copied from the CD-ROM to a \setup95 directory on a d:\ partition. What's the probability that all three are missing or corrupted?
The other portion of the question was why would I get an indication of missing or corrupt ifshlp.sys, dblbuff.sys and himem.sys files if they were copied straight from the win95 cd during the install? I've learned that win95 uses dblbuff.sys ,himem.sys. and ifshlp.sys when booting to safe mode. Thses files appear to be in the \windows directory of the c:\ drive. However the boot screen says they are either missing or corrupt. All the win95 .cab files were copied from the CD-ROM to a \setup95 directory on a d:\ partition. What's the probability that all three are missing or corrupted?
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Form reading your ENTIRE question and your additional comment, I wonder...
Can you copy or download your Acer BIOS setup onto a floppy disk? This is what I did when I originally upgraded my 486 Toshiba laptop before upgrading it to Windows 95 back in 1997. It may or may not help your particular problem because some PC's require that the BIOS have its own partition as mentioned by Banyan99.
Assuming that your HD was properly partitioned, I suggest you simply format it and run a clean install. Unlike Win 98 (as far as I know), Win 95 always needs its setup disks/CD-ROM to install anything from it. That's why you keep getting the errors. Anyone who reads this please correct me if this is wrong.
Alex
Can you copy or download your Acer BIOS setup onto a floppy disk? This is what I did when I originally upgraded my 486 Toshiba laptop before upgrading it to Windows 95 back in 1997. It may or may not help your particular problem because some PC's require that the BIOS have its own partition as mentioned by Banyan99.
Assuming that your HD was properly partitioned, I suggest you simply format it and run a clean install. Unlike Win 98 (as far as I know), Win 95 always needs its setup disks/CD-ROM to install anything from it. That's why you keep getting the errors. Anyone who reads this please correct me if this is wrong.
Alex
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I have faked a Windows 95 install too. All it looks at is a file called win.cn_. You can even take a blank floppy, run edit win.cn_, put I hate bill gates into the file, save it to the floppy and Windows 95 will take this as a legit upgrade. I confer with Godzilla, sounds like a disk error is preventing Windows 95 from writing to the MBR (possible virus protection in the BIOS maybe?)
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This topic area includes legacy versions of Windows prior to Windows 2000: Windows 3/3.1, Windows 95 and Windows 98, plus any other Windows-related versions including Windows Mobile.