After a clean HDD wipe on a number of older computers, I'm installing Windows 98 Second Edition on them. I partition, format, and install the OS just fine. The computer boots from the HDD. The problems begin when Windows runs for the second time trying to configure and install onboard device drivers...
After restarting from the "Running Windows for the first time" startup screen to make configuration changes, Windows brings up a series of driver installation windows. The problem is that most of the driver installations fail, except for the COM and printer parallel ports (which I assume are loaded from the WINDOWS folder). Every other driver setup process gives me an error about reading the Win98SE CD-ROM. It says to insert the CD and try again. I have the CD in the drive. It also has details about trying to copy dll, vxd, and other files from C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\PRELOAD to another location in \SYSTEM (source and destination addresses). When I click ok the box re-appears. I browse to the CD-ROM drive, E:\, but the drivers still won't install. I've tried this on several different IBM and Dell machines and got the same results. The fact that the CD drive is E: has nothing to do with it.
The drive works fine and the disk is in next to new condition. But it is burned to a CD-R at 4x. Would this have anything to do with it? I tried installing drivers manually through Device Manager, and Windows finds an INF file for each device in \SYSTEM, but it still gives me an error. I can't remember what the error says. However, one of the computers I tried this with gave me an error saying tht system couldn't read from the CD-ROM drive when checking the first radio button option (specify drivers from a specific location).
On a working computer running Win98SE, I looked at the onboard ethernet driver details and wrote down the filenames. Then I searched for those files on a problematic machine in C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM using Explorer and couldn't find them. They appear to be missing. The first few files are on the system, though. To be sure of this I did a search for those files on the working computer and I found them.
Aside from this, I also noticed the DOS prompt doesn't recognize some commands, like 'ipconfig' and 'help'. I ran it from the run menu and from the start menu but got the same results. Something tells me the OS didn't completely install. I know on each computer there is more than enough HDD space on the system partition.
I don't know what to do about the drivers. Apparently the other computers with Win98SE are working fine. All the devices are running Windows drivers and are working ok. Can someone help me with this? And I forgot to mention the failed driver installations are creating registry errors when starting the DOS kernel... :\
This is an exact copy of Win98SE. A friend of mine told me the system can't access the CD-ROM drive because of IDE controllers. I'll have to test the solution he gave me. It'll be a few days though.
