Part B:
I've thought about this a lot and decided I really don't understand well enough what I'm doing to explain it to someone else. A lot of the things that worked for me were just good guesses. If it is something you want to persue, I would make a few suggestions: Get a spare HDD that you can experiment with and install it in your new or your old computer. If the stuff on the drive in your old computer isn't too precious, you could use that one. This would also give you an opportunity to transfer whatever to your new one. Only problem with this is I don't know how Win98 will like a second Windows OS showing up. You may have to change the name of the Windows directory in 3.1. Anyone help me here?
Then once the old drive is installed as your second HDD, you can partition and format it, and add back anything to it that you backed up on your new HDD, and you could copy over to it the installation files for 3.1 or 98--whichever OS you want the old computer to run on.
Installing a HDD and partitioning is not difficult, but it's best explained by experts. I also think a familiarity with DOS will make the goings on much more understandable. Most of my understanding I got from Mark Minasi's book, "Expert Guide To Windows 95". Two other references I have are Peter Norton's "Guide To Upgrading And Repairing PC's", and Tiley's "Windows 95 Unleashed"
Here is a great on-line DOS manual:
computerhope.com
And finally I would add a tip about installing OS's. If the OS comes on a CD and you are doing a fresh install, i.e. your hard-drive is blank (actually, freshly formatted) then you need a way to access the files on the CD. You can boot to your Windows Startup Disk that comes with a Winows OS, but if you type in at the A-prompt:
A:> D:\win98\setup
you will get back: invalid drive, because the floppy won't see your CD-ROM. There's a special file you need on the floppy that doesn't come on the Start-up disk and it seems to be well-guarded by the comercial interests. That's all I've been able to deduce. I did get the store that sold me my present computer to give me a floppy with the necessary file. I tried to copy it over to my HDD for safe-keeping and further proliferation, but it wasn't to be copied--protected or whatever.
So, the work-around I've found for this is to get your blank hard-drive into a working computer with CD-ROM and copy the OS installation files onto your blank HDD. Then install the HDD into the destination computer. THEN, when you boot to the start-up floppy, and you type at the A-prompt:
A:> D:\Win98\Setup
It will say Welcome...
I might be able to add something about installing HDD's. However, I'm out of time for tonight. I hope this was at least a little helpful and you're not too disappointed.
wily |
