Hi all, I am trying to load win95 on my secondary machine. (packard bell Pentium 166) I got a boot disc to start with, and I created a DOS partition. Then I formatted the C drive.
When I run the windows “setup” command, I get a messsage that says:
“setup found a compressed volume or disk-cache utility on your computer, Quit setup and check your compressed volume with your disk compression software or remove the disc cache-utility. Then run setup again.”
Now, I don’t have any compression software. How can I take care of this? I thought that formating the C drive would take care of it, but I guess not. Big thanks in advance for anyone who can help me out here.
I vaguely remember those silly DOS drive compression programs… My suggestion would be to run fdisk on the drive and make sure the partition types get set correctly. Your best bet would probably be to delete all the partitions present and then make one DOS primary partition for the enitre drive, then format it and try the install again. Win95/98 can be phenomenally stupid about dealing with weird partitioning schemes during the install.
You need to fdisk this drive. Make sure your boot disk has the fdisk program on it. I had a drive like this once that I had to Fdisk two or three times before that compressed partition went away. Why? Not a clue.
To remove the partitions in Fdisk you must provide the volume name of each drive that has one. To gather volume names, at the command prompt (c:>) type in:
vol x:
where x is a drive letter on the hard drive. Be sure to include the colon after the drive letter. Write down the volume name, repeat for each drive you have on the hard disk. It’s ok if the drive doesn’t have a volume name.
so - fdisk c:>
view all primary and extended partitions. Delete each partition. View it all again, it’s good to view it at each step.
Set your primary partition, decide here if you want to use the whole drive, or just the first 2 gigs or so for C:>.
Then create an extended partition on the rest of the drive (if that’s what you want). Here you need to make one or more logical drives, they will usually be called D and E drives.
Actually, aenea, I think I may have done all of that already.
Let me tell you what I have done, and then you can tell me if I am overlooking anything.
First of all, the HD is only 2gig, and there is only the A drive (floppy) C drive (hard disk) and D drive (CD ROM). I only want to partion the DOS part required for Win95 installation.
When you say:
"Back to A:>
You need to fdisk this drive. Make sure your boot disk has the fdisk program on it."
The Boot disk does have fdisk on it. Are you saying I need to fdisk the A drive? (that doesn’t sound right to me, but I am by no means an expect here, as you probably already figured out.)
I went in, and verified that when I started that there were no existing partitions on C. I have been thru this process 4 or 5 times now, and I have created and deleted them several times.
So, if I verify that I have no existing partitions, I reboot, create a primary DOS partition on C, then format C, Then try to install, I still get the message in the OP.
Am I missing something?
Thanks again for your help.
Well, you got it all. Good job, btw. Nope, I didn’t mean to Fdisk your A:, just to head over there. Try a format full, or format all, I’m not sure I remember the command perfectly, to get whatever sector of your HD that you are not getting with the regular format command.
The thing is, some of the sectors on your drive are saying that they are still partitioned in some way, and not responding to the regular format. Let me know what you find if you can. With the price of drives these days, I hate to tell you to mess around too far with this. You can get lots of gigs for $150 anymore.
1: Set your IDE BIOS setting parameters for the drive to HDD MAX (or equivalent)
2: Make your boot disk on a different machine than the one you are currently using.
3: Make sure the version of fdisk you are using is relatively recent (use a Win 98 boot disk and Win98 fdisk if possible). It’s a simple utility but older versions might not completely blow out unusual compressed partitions.
4: Just so I’m clear, when you talk about partitioning the “DOS” part of the drive, you aren’t/weren’t using this drive for Linux or anything else in addition to DOS are you? You didn’t say you were but I just wanted to check.
Good Luck!
One of the System Tech guys at work just made the boot disc for me yesterday, I assume it’s all current, as he knows his stuff pretty well. Only problem is, machine is at home, and he is at work. The two will never meet in person.
No Linux here. Just trying to go thru the least headache possible to get this machine up and running again!
Do you know the command aenea is referring to? (Format full? format all?) Do you think that might work?
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by mouthbreather *
**Astro:
I don’t know how to do this. Can you explain?
When your machine is booting up there is typically a key (or keys) you can press to get into the setup portion of the machine. In the disk setup section make sure your IDE drive setting is set to “MAX” or whatever the most advanced setting is. If you have boot sector virus protection as a feature in your BIOS make sure it is set to “off”.
2. Yes, it was.
I mean make a new boot disk on a different machine than the one your friend used to make the boot disk that leads you into the cache/compressed disk error mode.
Do you know the command aenea is referring to? (Format full? format all?) Do you think that might work?
Asking for the switches available in DOS format does not give any reading for a “full” statement unless it’s a hidden switch (like fdisk /mbr). Perhaps Anea has more info.
As a final note what I sometimes do if I am running into fdisk/format problems on older machines is to put the drive into another WIN98 machine as a slave or secondary master and use that machine to throughly fdisk and format the drive. The only risk (lost timewise) is if the older BIOS cannot recognize the partitioning put on the disk by the other, more recent system, but I can’t imagine that even an older P 166 based machines chipset/BIOS would have a problem with a little 2 gig drive (but who knows) old Packard Bells are sometimes funny that way.
Yeah, happened to me too. W95 would NOT recognise my 32bit disk reformatting. So I put on ME instead.
W95 is 16 bit at least the version I have, must be yours too? Try using the manf install disk for the HD & specify it as 16 bit format. make sure no 32 format is present in the bios.
When you use fdisk, does it ask you if you want to enable large drive support? If it does, try saying no. Re-create your partition(s) and format again. This should format the drive using FAT16 (for older versions of Windows 95)instead of FAT32 (for newer versions). If you have an older version of 95 that may work.
If it doesn’t, is it a Western Digital hard drive? I have seen problems with WD’s EZ-Drive (I think that’s what it’s called). If you have it, try uninstalling the EZ-drive software.
I think what is happening is that you have a boot disk with Win 95 Service Release 2 which supports FAT 32 but are trying to install an earlier version of Win95.
I know there is a problem mixing versions and Win95 puts out a screwy message about disk compression. I don’t have a system setting around here that I can try it on, but I think that’s your problem.
My g/f just showed up, and she has a later version of Win95 (i think she has C, and I was working with A), and it is loading up as I type without a hitch.