Trouble with Windows 98 SE boot disk?

Question

So an older relative dug out an ancient desktop so they can ride the information super highway. At start up it had a cluttered copy of windows 98. I was ready to pop in the Net Zero disk but the tray wouldn't open up. I checked "my computer" and it didn't appear to even recognize there was a Cd-Drive. From there I decided that reinstalling windows 98 would be the easiest thing. Since I couldn't cram the disk in I left my great uncle and headed home to make a boot disk.

I made the disk and I'm testing it on a desktop with XP already installed. It will load and give me the three options (Start w/Cd-rom, start w/ out, help.), No matter which I pick I get the same error after everything loads up.
"The following file is missing or corrupted : COMMAND.COM
Type the name of the Command Interpreter (e.g. . C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND.COM)"

I did some looking around and reads something about typing "sys" but it didn't work out or I'm doing it wrong. I got the boot disk off bootdisk.com, which I'm assuming is an authority on bootdisking and not likely to be faulty.

I guess now would be a good time to mention that I'm pretty computer illiterate. I was elected to do all this solely on the basis that I'm young and I'm able to program a VCR. With that in mind, please try and make this as simple to understand as possible. I'm pretty stupid.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Just put your floppy in your computer, open My Computer and right click on your floppy drive which should either be A: or B: but probably A: and then select Format from the menu, and check off the option to make an MS-DOS disk. And that is it.

Answer 2

My guess is your download could be corrupted. Download again and hopefully they post an MD5 hash for the file. With an MD5 hash then you get and run an MD5 check program to see if you get the same value. MD5 value match = good download, if MD5 value does not match you have a download problem.



Old floppies and old floppy drives can be iffy, it could just be your floppy copy is bad ot the drive is not reading it well.

Answer 3

Download a working DOS/Windows9X/Me/NT/2K/XP Excellent Bootdisks here:

http://www.http://bootdisk.com/