Hi!
My daddy brought me some old PC and I wanted to reinstall OS (win95) because it was crappy - it was freezing, I had sounds only in some applications etc. So I ran setup.exe from my HDD (I have installation files there) and everything gone ok. But when installation reaches 23 - 26%, it writes: "Can not decode this installation file (.CAB)" and exits. So now instead of crappy OS I have no OS So i tried to run installation from CD-Rom, but when I press F8 a choose "Run MS-DOS" i can only operate with HDD and floppy, not with CD-Rom. When I boot from floppy, i can only operate with CD-Rom and floppy. Cool.
Does anyone know what should I do now?
Thank you for any posts.

hello berzeger and welcome to pchf

we have a wonderful team of techs with various areas of expertise that can help you with your problems

did you try downloading the windows 95 boot disk from bootdisk.com personnaly i would install windows 98se but it is up to you

looking forward to ur reply

genie3251

Hi,
thank you for quick answering.
Yes, 98se is better, but I wanted that PC (P166, 48megs of RAM, 2MB VGA) for really old games (dungeon master etc.).
gonna download that win95 boot disc...
(after a while)
nope, same like with DOS boot disc "Invalid drive specification"

well, I looked at it again and I think I need some HDD drivers (if something like that exists ), which I could attach to that bootable disc.

Hey Guys,

@Berzerger, my welcome to PCHF as well. Do you know how to enter the BIOS on this particular PC? If not can you give me the make and model? You do have the full version CD of 95, correct?

If you get into the BIOS, you want the PC to have the floppy drive boot up first. Then boot up with the bootdisk.

Once there, type in FDISK, and hit enter. You will want to recreate and reformat your HDD prior to attempting to install the OS.

Here are the instructions; Using Fdisk. Once you have deleted, and then created the partition, you will want to format it into FAT.

Then you should be able to correctly install Win95.

Looking forward to your reply,

TTFN

LGW

Hey ladygreenwitch!
Yap, I have Misrosoft Windows 95 with USB support CD.
That HDD is already in FAT32 and I also dont want to lose my data.
you mean make and model of BIOS? Okay, it is "Award Modular BIOS 4.51PG"