Hi all, I have an ols pII 233 running win 95 that I need to clean out it's needed to go into a school and seeing as I've had it and my daughter has had it connected to the net, I want the hard drive wipped clean and 95 put back on with none of the other useless programs to slow it even further.
What do i need to do to do this?
ps i do have an original win95
thanks
Jason

A big magnet.

is there a more profesional way ???

Jason

If the PC can boot from the CD drive a complete secure wipe of th HD is easy ---- BUT ---
Trouble with re-installing 95 on completely blank disc is it means starting from a floppy
It is a really messy procedure unless you have a manufacturers custom version of win95 that boots from CD and has hardware driver support with it.

Also when you start doing fresh installs on older PC hardware problems start to appear -- not unknown for floppy drives and drive controllers to die under the strain. I didn't morn 95 when 98 replaced it my life became much easier.
I would no longer consider any win95 computer to be maintanable, I honestly think you would be better scrapping the PC.

If you want to go ahead with donating the PC - the easy way to install win 95 was
(1) Delete all the program directories --
(2) Delete the directories contain any other personal stuff and any other directory not required for windows to function.
(3) Make a director c:/win95 into this copy everything from the win95 dirctory of you Win95 CD or floppies.
(4) Reboot into dos mode Now delete the windows directory from the c: prompt type "deltree c:windows" this will take anything up to 2 to 3 hours.
(5) from the prompt type cd "c:win95" then "setup" and win95 setup program will start.
Make sure you have the your win95 serial/cd installation code handy.

You will of course have to reinstall all the harware drivers --- Win95 only the has most basic harware drivers on cd.

cheers for that, I do have a copy of 98se, but it wouldn't load over the 95 for some reason, not sure why, it did it with another comp ??

Jason

Theres a trick

One copy of windows won't install over another (unless it is an official "udpate version" unless you deltete or rename the file "win.com" in the windows directory.
This will work even if you don't reboot --- be aware a lot of computers from the W95 era can't boot from a bootable CD because the hardware and/or bios won't allow.

You can then make a C:Win98 directory on the hd and copy the win98 files over and run set up from there.


[Edited on 22/1/06 by britishtrident]