Problem loading/restoring buddies Emachine

[Lateralus]

Yea, I know Emachine sucks, but my buddy isnt a pc freak and just checks his email with it.

Its a emachines etower 366i2.
For starters the Hard drive (seagate 4.3) was bad, had atleast 8 bad clusters before it locked up. I replaced it with a 10gig WD. Formated and loaded the restore cd. Everthing appeared to be loading and going smooth. During boot up i'm getting several errors. 1. after scan disc runs i get an registry error. 2. booting in safe mode it locks up at the windows 98 logo. I need to add that I also tried another know good wd 10 gig.


Thinking maybe something was wrong with the restore CD I attempted to load my windows 98 cd. When I tried that it would get to the point of where it should start copying system files and got this error-- setup has detected a corrupt Setup (.cab) file.
I even tried installing window 3.1 and got the same error.
I searched that error and found this.
http://support.microsoft.com/default...N-US;q140901&.

Oh, one thing I might should mention. I just got his tower.
meaning I am using my good keyboard, mouse, and 21in monitor.
dont think any of that would matter, but I dont wanna leave anything out.
Any help or suggestions you could give me to save him some money?

Thanks! Lat

[Martoch]

Have you tried installing 98 this way: Booting to A drive of course, then proceeding with...

Formatting C: of course.

Make these Windows disk directories:
C:\>MD WINDOWS
C:\>MD WINDOWS\OPTIONS
C:\>MD WINDOWS\OPTIONS\CABS
Copy Install Files to the Hard Drive

Insert the Windows 98 CD (CD-ROM will be drive E: )

Copy all the required setup files:
C:\>CD WINDOWS\OPTIONS\CABS

Now copy the contents of the CD's WIN9x directory for the Windows 98 setup files:
C:\WINDOWS\OPTIONS\CABS>COPY E:\WIN98

Start the Setup Program
C:\WINDOWS\OPTIONS\CABS>SETUP

Full clean install instructions found here:
http://www.hexff.com/win98_install.html

Hope this helps ya some!


Mike

[Lateralus]

Thanks Mike for the info. I had a long day and will try all your suggestions tommorow after work.. Thanks, I will let you all know how it turns out.

[Lateralus]

I couldnt wait so I followed the directions to a T.
I go the same .cab file error.
Any other ideas?

[Wombat]

Hey Jodes,
I have swapped many of emachine OS's and have never had a prob, do you have another windows disc as it sound like one area didn't read properly or maybe the cdrom isn't reading so good. Maybe try replacing the cdrom at least for the install of windows.

Paul

[Theophylact]

I like the idea of trying another CD drive. I had problems with a bad drive that loused up installations on three different machines before I finally decided it was the drive (and not the disks) that was the problem. I finally tossed out the drive.

[Lateralus]

Paul, your are the MAN!!!!!!!
CDROM was the problem afterall.. so, bad hard disk and cdrom.

Martoch.. Thanks for your help and link.. Good info and site is saved..

[Richard Cranium]

martoch, do you assign a "Volume Label" ?

"Assign a Volume Label when prompted.'