H E L P reformatting old 386 H E L P

o.k. i have a very large paperweight with a 5.25" floppy(which is the primary floppy), a 3.5" floppy(which isn't registering)and a cd-rom drive(also not registering).i have dos 5.0 on 5.25" floppies and windows 3.1 on 3.5" disks.i can't load the dos program to the hard drive. i don't know what commands to use but whatever i've tried hasn't worked. also, do i need to have the windows program transferred to 5.25" floppies or will the 3.5" drive come on line once dos is loaded up? any and all assistance will be greatly appreciated.

Howdy
If your computer is starting without the aide of a bootdisk, and you get a C:\
Type DIR/w and hit enter and see what comes up, If there is a dir named DOS, do this type CD\DOS and hit enter. type DIR/w and hit enter. Did alot of files come up on your screen??.Then you may have DOS installed already.
If you have start up using a boot disk??
Because of the age of your and speed of your computer, I suspect that your boot drive is A:/5.25, If so put DOS disk 1 in and start up your computer, You should get A:\ If so type INSTALL and hit enter.
if this works just follow with disk 2 and etc.
Now getting to why the your 31/2 disk is not showing up is Maybe not setup in the Bios(Cmos) correctly.I think you need drive A:\ to install windows3.1 (help somebody is this correct)????
Now your cdrom not showing up is because you have to set up drivers for it in your Autoexec.bat and Config.sys files.
If you what make and model # it is there are people in forum who can tell you where to get them.Does Any body in the Forum want to add to help us here???

Let us know!! there is some one here to help

Hope this helps




[This message has been edited by zookeeper (edited 09-30-99).]