I know it has been a week, so if you have not done this yet, perhaps I could add a few bits of information to the advise you have already been given.
Although this forum is not the proper place to learn all the variables involved.
Apparently the big problem with re-doing an emachine with win98 is finding the drivers for the emachine. Some of the
video and other drivers are not on the win98 CD/restore disk.
You could attempt to go to
emachine website to download all the drivers that you can, before
you try to reinstall win98.
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If you really, honestly and truly want to re-install windows98, you may have an image of the CD on your hard disk. In the I386 directory are two
files:
winnt32.exe is the "32 bit" version of the character mode Windows setup. You may be able to run this from within Windows.
winnt.exe is the "16 bit" version of the character mode Windows setup. Why a 16 bit version? If you can't run winnt32.exe and are able to boot from
an MS-DOS floppy, or are able to boot to Win9x DOS mode, then this setup program will work for you.
WARNING: character.exe and winnt32.exe are the start-from scratch, do it all over setup programs. Use them only if you want a complete re-install of
Windows.
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OR:
If there is no winnt32.exe file, check to see if the installation files for windows you have has a cabs/setup.exe file. *Note that you could execute
this within windows, just launch the c:\windows\options\cabs\setup.exe if you have the space available.
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Or:
If you are not using the win95 on the second disk, format it as fat32 before you copy the win98 files to it. After that, copy the files you want to
save to your 2nd hard drive.
Make a directory on your 2nd hard drive called windows\options\cabs.
Copy the windows CAB files to this folder.
make a windows 98 floppy boot disk
Set your bios to boot to floppy. Put the floppy in and restart.
after the floppy boots type:
c:
cd windows
cd options
cd cabs
Setup.exe /ie
The /ie flag tells Windows 98 not to make a new Startup Floppy during the installation.
Well, that is enough info for now.
You have probably fixed it by now anyway.
Best of luck
makeitso
[edit on 26-6-2005 by makeitso]