i recently purchased a dell latitude cpx, i have a copy of windows 95, but when I put it into the cd tray the computer says there are "no bootable devices" when i strike f1 I get the same message agian, when i strike f2 i get a dell computer corporation screen: dell latitude cpx j650gt setup (bios version:a15) can anyone suggest what I do next, this is my first computer so I am not very good at this stuff, if anyone can help i would appreciate it. craig......

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Here are some sites with step-by-step instructions:

http://www.pcnineoneone.com/howto/clean1.html
http://www.netpathway.com/~kramer/reinstall.html
http://www.hexff.com/win98_install.html

Good luck.

Jerry

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Thank You Jerry for your reply, but I connot get DOS onto the computer. If you have any info on getting DOS then I would really appreciate that Craig....

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Hi Craig:

First, were going to make a BOOTDISK. You will need access to a working computer with an Internet connection, and a blank 1.44MB floppy disk. Go to this site:
http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm
and download the file for the version of Windows95 you want to install. Do not put the downloaded file on the floppy disk. Your downloaded file will be either BOOT95A.EXE or BOOT95B.EXE, and you can put it on the Desktop, or any other convenient place on your friend's computer. (You can delete it later).

Put your blank floppy disk in your friend's computer, and double-click on the downloaded file you put on the Desktop. This will make a BOOTDISK out of your blank floppy disk.

Now, put the BOOTDISK in the broken computer while the power is OFF, then turn on the power. Watch the screen -- stuff will fly by. It should stop at "A:\>", and if you look back UP a few lines, you should see the word "BANANA".

If all this works, chances are your CDROM does too. It will be drive "R:".

You should be able to put your Windows installation CD in the CDROM drive, and type "R:\SETUP", and press enter. The Windows installation should begin.

If this doesn't get you started, post back here, and we'll try to figure out what's wrong.

Good luck.

Jerry

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

Jerry Everything went to plan the computer now show the following message "If you have HPFS or NTFS installed on your hard drive, you will need to create an MS-DOS boot partition to set up Windows" Arggggggg I'm sorry to bother you again. Craig.


On Friday, October 10, 2003 at 12:11 am, Jerry wrote:
>Hi Craig:

>
>First, were going to make a BOOTDISK. You will need access to a working computer
>with an Internet connection, and a blank 1.44MB floppy disk. Go to this site:
>
>http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm
>
>and download the file for the version of Windows95 you want to install. Do not put
>the downloaded file on the floppy disk. Your downloaded file will be either BOOT95A.EXE
>or BOOT95B.EXE, and you can put it on the Desktop, or any other convenient place
>on your friend's computer. (You can delete it later).

>
>Put your blank floppy disk in your friend's computer, and double-click on the downloaded
>file you put on the Desktop. This will make a BOOTDISK out of your blank floppy
>disk.

>
>Now, put the BOOTDISK in the broken computer while the power is OFF, then turn on
>the power. Watch the screen -- stuff will fly by. It should stop at "A:\>", and
>if you look back UP a few lines, you should see the word "BANANA".

>
>If all this works, chances are your CDROM does too. It will be drive "R:".

>
>You should be able to put your Windows installation CD in the CDROM drive, and type
>"R:\SETUP", and press enter. The Windows installation should begin.

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

Now I "am" stumped. You DID say you had WINDOWS "95" on your computer before the accident, didn't you? NTFS is what Windows 2000 (or Windows "NT") uses, and that error message you got usually pops up when someone tries to install Windows 9x on an NTFS formatted hard drive.

You could certainly reformat (or create an additional empty FAT16 or FAT32 partition), but that wouldn't save any of your old data files -- it essentially makes a blank hard drive.

By any chance did somebody try to upgrade your Win95 to WIN2000 or WinXP?

(Scratching my head.)

Jerry

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Craig:

Sorry -- I just posted a reply for somebody else's queston above -- ignore it. Give me a few minutes to work on YOUR question, and I'll post right back.

(I HATE this forum software -- you can't EDIT any of your previous posts! Argg!)

Jerry

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

Hi Craig, I'm back.

Apparently the previous owner of your computer had WIN2000 or WINNT or WINXP on it, and you have a hard drive formatted for NTFS ("New Tehnology File System")(thank you, Bill Gates).

This can be fixed with FDISK, which is part of the BOOTDISK you made yesterday. (I had to take some time to test some FDISK things, because I don't use it anymore -- I like PartionMagic for DOS because it's so easy to use, but I'm not going to send you out to buy PM for this one operation that you need.)

BE CAREFUL! FDISK can be dangerous. In the old DOS help guide, the first sentence is: "Do not experiment with FDISK." So we're just going to take this one step at a time. Today let's just use FDISK to examine the current setup of your hard drive, and then we'll decide what you want to do with it.

Boot up with your BOOTDISK.
You'll see "A:\>"
Type "FDISK" (enter)
A screenful of warning messages will appear. (Yikes!) The last line says "Do you wish to enable large disk support (Y/N)...?" The default shows as "[N]", so just press ENTER.

NOTE: This line about the "Large Disk Support" may not appear if your total hard drive is smaller than 512MB (unlikely). I didn't have anything with a small hard drive to test with, so I don't know what alternate message might appear. I suspect you'd jump right ahead to the MENU.

The MENU appears.
Select "4. Display partition information" and press ENTER.

Now, write down everything on the screen, and post it back here on the forum. That's all we're going to do today.

Press ESCAPE to back up to the MENU.
Press ESCAPE again to quit FDISK.

Jerry

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

Hi Jerry, I am sorry about the confusion but I have just found out the computer has a Windows 2000 registration sticker on the bottom of it. So I am just wondering if I will have to have a Windows 2000 disk for it to work now. Thanks Craig

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Hi Craig:

You can put WIN95 on your computer, even if it had WIN2000 on it before -- it just means we have to change the type of file system the hard drive uses. If you don't have any data you want to save on the hard drive, we can change the file structure with FDISK, and install WIN95.

If you want to do that, the first step is to get the PARTITION INFORMATION we talked about in the "I'm back" post of 10/10/03.

Do you have the Certificate-of-Authenticity number for the Windows 95 disk that you have? You'll need it if you want to put WIN95 on the computer.

Jerry

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Hi Jerry, You seem to know a lot about computers, so maybe you can help me with my Dell Inspiron Laptop problem. The other day I was online, when the computer froze. I shut down, but when I restarted the screen was black, then it said "Primary hard disk drive 0 not found". It also said to hit F1 to try again (at which point "no bootable devices" showed), or F2 to enter setup (which means nothing to me!). Please help!

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

Well, the worst-case-scenario is that the hard drive has suddenly died.

Go to a working computer with an Internet connection and download (to the working computer) a copy of "Windows 95 Version B" from this site:
http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm

After the download has finished, double-click on the downloaded file, and it will make a BOOTDISK from a BLANK floppy disk you will provide.

After you have your new BOOTABLE floppy disk, put it in the floppy drive of the broken computer while the power is off, then turn it on. It should bring you to a DOS prompt that looks like this: "A:\>"

Type "C:" and press ENTER. (Don't type the quotation marks.)

Now type "DIR /w" and press ENTER. (Note that there is a SPACE in front of the SLASH, and note the ANGLE of the SLASH.)

What message do you get on the screen?

Jerry

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dear jerry: i have problem with my laptop, my prolem is the same with no bootable devices, when the prolem come out, i tried to solve it, unfortunetly, i failured, therefore, i buy a new one to instead the old one, but the problem is still here, my type is dell inspiron 500. i have not the floppy inside, i dont how to do, plz help me, thanks a lot, waiting for u reply.... best regards adam

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

Hi Adam:

I'm sorry you're having trouble with your laptop.
I usually use a bootable floppy disk to get into
DOS, then I can investigate the problem from there
-- but since you don't have a floppy drive at all,
I'm not sure what to recommend.  You probably have
a CDROM drive, and it's probably set up to boot
from that if you have a WINDOWS CD installation
disk.

It may be time for it to go into a repair shop.

Sorry.

Jerry

[Reply or follow-up to this message]

hi jerry: thanks for replying to me so quickly, i appreciate with u help, i need to tell u that i can use usb to into dos, although i have not the floppy. however, i dont know to investigeat under the dos, i am not familiar with the system. plz tell me how to do it , thanks a lot!!!!!!!!! adam

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Hi Adam:

Do you see anything on the screen that looks like
any of these?

C:\>_

A:\>_

R:\>_

C:\WINDOWS>_


Jerry

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I see that you are getting answers. I'm surprised, actually. It's a very poor idea to tack a question onto the end of a thread as old as the one you found using the Search Function here. It is far better to start a new thread of your own, in which case you get much more breadth of responses.

Further, it does not appear that you are a native user of the English language. I agree, it's tough to learn it if you wait until adulthood to start. But improved spelling helps you also (because more people will keep on reading a well-written message, and will click away from a messy, badly spelled one), so a good idea for anyone like you who is new to the language, or else someone whose education here in this country was inadequate, (or they may have learning disabilities, whichever), there are many very useful free spelling utilities you can add to your browser, or you can use a text editor to compose replies in, and do your spell checking in the editor.

With that aside, allow me to suggest the investment of a few dollars US, or the equivalent in the currency of your birth nation, for the little yellow book by Dan Gookin named "PC's for Dummies", or whatever it amounts to when translated into the language you speak at home, and it has been translated into MANY languages. It's now in it's sixth, or eighth, or some higher level yet, of next edition numbers.

It's an excellent reference, and the title is no insult.

.

Kiwi

**


On Thursday, August 4, 2005 at 9:35 am, adam wrote:
>
>
>
> i have problem with my laptop, my prolem is the same with no bootable devices,
>when the prolem come out

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