I could use a little help...

I should probably know this, but I don't.

I picked up an old Dell Desktop PC from my girlfriend's house yesterday and brought it home. The OS is Windows 95, by the way. Anyways, she had hooked it up at her house to get whatever files she wanted to keep off of it. When I brought it home I hooked it up and tried to boot it, but every time Scandisk runs (I guess the computer wasn't properly shut down the last time it was on) and when it is complete it freezes. I don't even get an option to enter the BIOS when I boot it.

Any suggestions?

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/usr

She has already saved her data?

Format & reinstall.

If she hasn't saved her data, hook it up as a secondary drive in your machine and grab the data. If you really don't want to format the drive, try this first. Run chkdsk on the drive when you have it hooked up like this, plus all the other necessary scans like anti-virus, spyware, etc.

entzilla

She already got whatever files she wanted off of the computer.

I was planning on formating the drive, but it won't even start up. Scandisk runs before the OS takes over and it freezes after it is done checking the drive.

/usr

Do the second thing I suggested and run chkdsk.

entzilla

I just remembered I have a Windows 95 boot floppy laying around somewhere in my house, so I will look for that.

Thanks for your help.

Jerz

I'm quite sure you won't be able to boot from cd since it's an old machine so you need to create a bootable floppy disk that has the cdrom drivers.

Jerz

Edit: Looks like you beat me to it but if you can't find that floppy checkout bootdisk.com

entzilla

Cool, thanks for the link.

TeKniques

Usually the del key will get you into the BIOS at startup. I'm guessing you see the Dell splash screen when you boot so that's why you don't have the option to get into BIOS.

entzilla

It shows the model type and then it starts Scandisk. I tried Delete and F1, but nothing.

/usr

You could have taken the drive out and ran chkdsk on it by now.

Hopefully it is hanging up on some error and chkdsk will fix it, allowing you to get into the OS.

entzilla

/usr wrote:

You could have taken the drive out and ran chkdsk on it by now.

I'm not sure how to do that, never had to before. Please explain.

Jerz

If you download from bootdisk.com the floppy you create will have chkdsk on the floppy. You can run it from the command prompt by typing chkdsk /fix (or just /f been a while since I messed with 95) at the a:

and if I remember correctly...
If you're going to put win95 back on the machine you can check or redo the partition table with fdisk, format the c: by typing in format c: /s (the /s switch will make your hdd bootable) of course formatting the drive will destroy all of your data.

I'd just reformat the thing and start over.

/usr

I'm assuming you have your own computer, right?

If so, physically take out her hard drive and hook it up in your pc as a secondary drive, then run chkdsk on it.

entzilla

/usr wrote:

I'm assuming you have your own computer, right?

If so, physically take out her hard drive and hook it up in your pc as a secondary drive, then run chkdsk on it.

Oh, hehe, I didn't put much thought into that before I asked.

entzilla

Jerz wrote:

I'd just reformat the thing and start over.

That's what I'm planning to do. I don't need anything that she had on there, and it is probably loaded with spyware and viruses.