The Girl-Geek Anthropologist

Well, after two hours yesterday, and going on three today, I think I am very close to getting this laptop all set up.

See, the problem is that Windows ME is not bootable. And, if you formatted your entire harddrive, you know that you will not have even DOS installed on it. The solution, of course, is to use a bootable floppy, format the harddrive and get it ready for install. Then, launch the WindowsME setup from the CD-Rom. Straight forward.

But, because I have a swappable floppy and CD-ROM, it's impossible for me to do that. So, I had to track down a version of DOS that I can put on a CD, and have it be bootable. After three different tries, I finally found the correct version of DOS that supports large disks (for a comparison of different versions, click on this link).

I downloaded the correct version from ms-dos7.hit.bg/#msfv, and it's currently checking the partitions on my haddrive. But, since I don't really have any partitions, I don't know what it's doing. I might need to burn another disk to fix this. I've gone through about six CDs so far, because I don't have CD-RW disks to use. Grr..

Actually, strike that, I need DOS 8.0. I finally was able to download the correct version from Powerload Boot Disk Project. This actually seems like it's working. We'll see.

10:11 - Now FINALLY formatting. Looks like exactly what I need. Stupid Windows!

11:30 - I needed both disks mentioned above to get things set up. Not only that, but I also had the pleasure of reinstalling Windows 98 because stupid ME will not clean install since it's meant as an upgrade, and crashed at first install. Now, ME is at 61% install.

Meanwhile.... I uninstalled Bonjour.exe from my Vista laptop, and now my network has stopped working.

I should just stop, and like go back or something.