reinstall windows 98se without cd

[Cloud No.9]

i managed to get a copy of the 98 cd.

so can someone give me a very simple step by step solution to refomatting the hard drive and reinstalling windows from start to finish.

also is there another way of purging the disk without reformatting?

[Lenna]

A brand new computer will always come with a back-up disc. But it doesn't JUST have the OS on it most of the time. It usually comes with extra programs such as IE, Windows media player, Acrobat reader stuff like that. Programs which they think you will need on the computer. If it doesn't come with a back up cd then you will have to complain, and they will send out another one. The only way you wouldn't get a back up cd is if you created a computer yourself with your own parts. Then you'd have to buy the OS disc itself.

[Cloud No.9]

i now longer need the OS disk. I just need a how-to step by step thing now.

[edczxcvbnm]

If you want to format your hard drive then I recommend using Killdisk first. It will write 0s to your HD so nothing at all will linger behind. It is what I use on all my computers from 98-XP whenever I do a reformat. You just need to create a boot floppy and put killdisk on it(instructions come with the program).

I usually just download it from www.download.com

After that is done then you can put the 98 disc in the CD Drive and restart your CPU.

It is pretty self explainitory once it gets going...to get it going turn the CPU on. If it does not auto load then you will need to change your boot sequence in the BIOS. You should just need to hit F12 or Del or F10 or something like that. It should be on the first screen you ever seen when your CPU boots up. Someone else could probably give a more detailed explaination of what to do when in the BIOS but lets hope it doesn't come to that.

[crono_logical]

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=1M

Adjust blocksize for performance reasons

Even better than all 0's, use if=/dev/urandom and run the command several times, it obfuscates the data on the disk even more beyond repair than plain zeroing


I personally think zeroing the disk is overkill in the first place though if all you're gonna do is reformat - unless something is malfunctioning, it doesn't matter if any data is lingering behind because it will not exist as far as the new filesystem from formatting will be concerned

[edczxcvbnm]

I know but I say "Why the hell not? Its just another 15-20 minutes. I will just be safe and blow the whole thing up."