Starting Over

I would like to restore my old computer as if I had just installed W98SE on a blank drive, but I don't have the disks (it came with the OS installed). There is a folder on the drive called DISKS and I assume all the installation disks are in there. Is there a way to tell the OS to wipe the drive clean and re-install itself?

Alternately, what if I burned the folder called DISKS onto a CD? Could I then format my drive and re-install from scratch? Wouldn't I need a product key?

Why not give some indication as to what is in the folder called DISKS?
If it contains the installation media, you should see files like:
BASE4.CAB
BASE5.CAB
BASE6.CAB
CATALOG3.CAB
DRIVER11.CAB up to DRIVER20.CAB
NET10.CAB
NET7.CAB
NET8.CAB
NET9.CAB
PRECOPY1.CAB
PRECOPY2.CAB
WIN98_21.CAB up to WIN98_74.CAB
WIN98_OL.CAB
chl99.cab
mini.cab

As to the product key...
If Win98 is still running, get it from the Registry with Regedit.exe
The key is
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion
The value is ProductKey

....Alan

--
Alan Edwards, MS MVP W95/98 Systems
http://dts-l.org/index.html

In microsoft.public.win98.setup, Davesmind wrote:

I would like to restore my old computer as if I had just installed W98SE on a blank drive, but I don't have the disks (it came with the OS installed). There is a folder on the drive called DISKS and I assume all the installation disks are in there. Is there a way to tell the OS to wipe the drive clean and re-install itself?

Alternately, what if I burned the folder called DISKS onto a CD? Could I then format my drive and re-install from scratch? Wouldn't I need a product key?

Open the folder called disk and give us
an idea of what is in it. Your Product Key
Code can be found before formatting. Get
this and it can give you a lot of valualed
info before formatting and can be printed
out.
Get AIDA
http://www.aida32.hu/aida32.php
-----Original Message-----
I would like to restore my old computer as if I had just
installed W98SE on a blank drive, but I don't have the
disks (it came with the OS installed). There is a folder
on the drive called DISKS and I assume all the
installation disks are in there. Is there a way to tell
the OS to wipe the drive clean and re-install itself?

Alternately, what if I burned the folder called DISKS
onto a CD? Could I then format my drive and re-install
from scratch? Wouldn't I need a product key?
.

The folder contains all these cabinets, plus many other files, plus another folder called "TOOLS" which contains many other folders. If I simply copy the entire contents of the "DISKS" folder as is to a CD, will I then have an installation disk? Or should I copy only the ones you've listed?

Then how do I install after I've formatted the hard drive? I don't think I can set the computer to boot from CD (I'll check again). If I make a boot disk before formatting the hard drive, will that do it?

I found the product key, thanks.

It sounds like DISKS is the folder to copy. Yes, copy all the files. I
only gave you a list of the .cab files but you need everything there.
No idea what TOOLS is, but keep that as well.
There should be a SETUP.EXE in the DISKS folder. That is what you
start the installation with.
You should create a startup disk with CD drivers on it.
You don't have to format. I haven't done a clean install for years,
but when I did, I just cleaned out what I didn't want, so you could
leave DISKS and TOOLS on the hard drive.

For information on installing W98, go to:
http://home.satx.rr.com/badour/html/w98_restore.html

....Alan

--
Alan Edwards, MS MVP W95/98 Systems
http://dts-l.org/index.html

In microsoft.public.win98.setup, Davesmind wrote:

The folder contains all these cabinets, plus many other files, plus another folder called "TOOLS" which contains many other folders. If I simply copy the entire contents of the "DISKS" folder as is to a CD, will I then have an installation disk? Or should I copy only the ones you've listed?

Then how do I install after I've formatted the hard drive? I don't think I can set the computer to boot from CD (I'll check again). If I make a boot disk before formatting the hard drive, will that do it?

I found the product key, thanks.