Installation of your own Windows 95/98

How I installed my Windows #1

How to install Toshiba's Windows 95/98

Installation of your own Windows '95 (that is, not the one supplied with your Libretto) should be easy if you have an OEM Win'95 CD-ROM (I don't know how to install from OEM Win95 floppies, I've never tried that). Somehow you must ensure access to the Win95 setup files on the CD-ROM (\*.*, \Win95 & \Drivers), either by

You can boot from a floppy containing the necessary drivers (PCMCIA + PCMCIA-CD-ROM player or Iomega's Guest program (DOS version! not Windows).

You can also make one partition bootable during formatting (or use SYS.COM from a bootable floppy) and boot from there. Considering the large harddisk size it may be a good idea to store the Win95 setup files somewhere to be able to reinstall Win95 anew when it is needed (my desktop version becomes unstable every after 3 to 5 months).

Windows '95 does not need a dedicated PCMCIA floppy driver, as it uses the Toshiba BIOS. Windows '98 does need a floppy driver. All needed drivers (sound, video, screen panning, APM, etc.) can be downloaded from the Toshiba download web site (ask Iris, etc.).

It may be the best to have Windows '95 OSR-B or higher versions, as these support FAT32 and make more efficient use of available disk space.

This was actually a piece of cake. I backed up my employer's Windows version from my old Digital using WinZip ("including dialog, folder names, recurse subdirs and include hidden files"). It took several Zip files to do this, considering free space on the relevant Digital harddisk amounted to only 100 Mb.

Other file transfer protocols through cables are by Norton Commander v. 4 (serial); Laplink (parallel); Parac (parallel; Dutch; connect pin 1 rather than pin 6 with pin 11 on the other plug); Interlink (supplied with older Windows and/or DOS (serial & parallel). Windows 95 probably needs IPX to run DCC properly.

Of course Windows discovered new hardware, but all needed drivers can be found on the utilities CD-ROM supplied by Toshiba or on Toshiba's support download site. Deleting old hardware can easily be done through the Configuration->Device drivers menu. Afterwards I ran RegClean 4.1a and used ERU (Emergency recovery utility - check out your Win95 CD-ROM!) to back up all important system files on the D:-partition.

Once at the office, I plugged in the PCMCIA network card and logged in to find that everything performed fine. Network SMS-jobs ran without any problem till now.

Although mentioned as second step, the Toshiba Windows 95 was one of the last to install.

Installation can be done easily from the CD-ROMS supplied with the Libretto. There are two CD-ROMS with Win95 and Win 98, resp. plus a utilities CD-ROM. There is also a floppy disk, with a warning that the entire harddisk will be wiped out and repartitioned if Windows will be reinstalled from the recovery CD-ROMs.

Well, I won't go in detail but I avoided wiping as follows: On the Win95 CD-ROM an enormous file exists. I copied this to drive D:, used the command SYS somewhere; and used the program FD3CHK (on the setup-diskette) to install Windows 95 on partition 4. Windows 98 can be installed the same way. Further details can be found by checking out the BAT files on the Libretto recovery floppies and CD-ROMs.

At first, being curious for Windows 98, I installed Windows 98 on the (until then) untouched harddisk. Soon after I found I did not like the web-browser like user interface and channel shit and removed them.

However, while using Windows 98 it turned out that:

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