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Win 95 upgrade "catch 22"

M

Micom 2000

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Mar 6, 2004
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Manitoba North of 50 degrees Latitude
I have 2 LTs I would like to upgrade from Win 4 WGs to Win 95. My latest one is an HP Omnibook 4000. The other is a Compaq LTE lite 4/33. For both you could get a BIOS upgrade for Win 95. On trying to install w95 says it cannot install, get an OEM upgrade install.

What is there lacking in the BIOS' of these beasts ? I've had little problem using W95 install CDs on everything from PS/2s to clone desktops. Was it just some proprietary thing with laptops ?

In trying to flash the BIOS of the HP it returns an exception that you must use the AC adaptor, assuming I'm trying to flash the Bios with the battery, but it is a Compaq adaptor which works fine at 18.5 vdc 2.7A. whereas the HP adaptor is rated at 21 vdc and 1.27A.
and ordinarily uses a 14.4 battery. I figure that the demands of the BIOS Flash might either not to met, or else it's just a default to guard the BIOS since the 2.7A even at the lower voltage should provide plenty enough power.

I'm going to try the Compaq LTE Bios flash again using the Dock I now have but it seems a bit contrived to have to go thru all this. Hardware shortcuts and sloppy programming seems to be the order of the day. Add enough memory and all faults in sloppy programming and bad design can be covered. Bushnell and Tramiel would have fired the lot of them.

Anyone know workarounds for my problems. Like generic BIOS upgrades or extra code allowing me to use Win 95 ? Or should I just forget-about-it and use Win 4 WG which I do have many adequate programs for. Aaarrghhh !

Lawrence

Lawrence
 
Can you be more specific on the error message? I assume you have at least 4MB ram in both of them. Plus something like 50MB of disk space.
 
For the Bios upgrade it says "you must use AC power. Attach the AC adaptor and retry" It gives me a couple of options which don't respond, locks and I have to turn the power off.

The W95 message on both laptops just says that I have an existing OS that W95 is unable to upgrade and that I should get a proper upgrade from my manufacturer, then exits. There is obviously something missing in the BIOS that W95 requires. So much for MS$ universality. It is the W95B version. I'd never run across this problem with desktops using W4WG.

Whose to blame ? The Mfgrs, the BIOS providers, or the MS$ Win95 coders or engineers. For a laptop which will run on a battery power of 14 vdc, needing an AC power supply of 21 vdc is certainly questionable in design, even if it is the venerable Hewlitt-Packard. Ditto for MS$ for designing an OS which didn't take into account the various Intel computers it would be installed on.

As opposed to earlier days where brilliant hardware and software engineers were shafted by marketers and greedy owners, a good proportion of present-day engineers are simply drones churning out the needs as required by their masters of the "Big Sell" with little pride in thier work.

I expect in the next 20 years or so there will be some surprises for the complacent computer industries in the west as the massive 4Bil.+ populations of China and India begin to propel the still-learning techs into the center of technological advances much greater than the smaller population of Japan even achieved. Look out West, here they come !

Lawrence
 
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Micom 2000 said:
For the Bios upgrade it says "you must use AC power. Attach the AC adaptor and retry" It gives me a couple of options which don't respond, locks and I have to turn the power off.

The W95 message on both laptops just says that I have an existing OS that W95 is unable to upgrade and that I should get a proper upgrade from my manufacturer, then exits. There is obviously something missing in the BIOS that W95 requires. So much for MS$ universality. It is the W95B version. I'd never run across this problem with desktops using W4WG.
Whose to blame ? The Mfgrs, the BIOS providers, or the MS$ Win95 coders.

Lawrence
Click to expand...
------------
Most likely you (and that should be "who's," not "whose"...;-)

What does an existing OS incompatible with W95 have to do with the BIOS?

And what would you say if the HP proceeded to flash the BIOS and died halfway through leaving you with a dead computer, all because you're using a Compaq adapter with the wrong voltage?

Hrmph!

FWIW, I've got an LTE Elite happily running W98 and DOS6.22 in two partitions.

m
 
Yet both the LTE Lite 4/33 and the Omnibook 4000 supposedly need a BIOS upgrade to be able to run Win 95. I agree, why should these widely-sold LTs require a BIOS upgrade to be able to run W95 ? What has the BIOS got to do with replacing the OS ? Obviously something that was on the other desktop computers I have upgraded. Others are also happily running the OB with W95 (it apparently chokes on W98 ) but couldn't do it without a BIOS upgrade. I'm just wondering what the missing ingredient is and why it wasn't there. Or why MS$ didn't supply it. I'll try installing the "needed" W95 Bios, (according to Compaq) using the Dock with my LTE Lite (not Elite) and see if one of the Win95 install disks works.

If it doesn't I can simply attribute it to some innermost failing of mine and not the usual BS where MS$ uses it's customers to test and correct it's products, then "obsoletes" it to start a new round of customer testing.

Lawrence
 
Refresh me L, what version of DOS is on the OmniBook? When it tells you it can't upgrade that OS, it doesn't mean the Windows version, but the DOS. Perhaps it's has a newer version of DOS that the older W95 disk cannot upgrade?

--T
 
Sorry to say, but I don't think that is it. I recently installed DOS 6.22, then WFW 3.11, then did a Win95 upgrade. It didn't complain at all. Of course, it does turn out that the CD appears to be a OEM version.
 
Oh wait, I did the Switch to drive D:, followed by "setup". So, it really wasn't a upgrade. It did save DOS 6.22 as "the previous version of DOS" on the menu, and that does work. Goes back to normal 6.22 DOS when selected.
 
Micom 2000 said:
Bingo ! You might just have it. I took it for granted it was referring to Win 3.11
It's got MSDOS 6.22 in it. What does W95 expect ?

Lawrence
Click to expand...

OK, that's probably not it, since 6.22 was out before W95. Now if it were v.7.x, mebbe. Have you tried renaming the system files (after making them visible of course)? Prob'ly wouldn't hurt to rename WIN.COM either, so that the installer doesn't see anything that gives it heartburn.

--T
 
chuckcmagee said:
Oh wait, I did the Switch to drive D:, followed by "setup". So, it really wasn't a upgrade. It did save DOS 6.22 as "the previous version of DOS" on the menu, and that does work. Goes back to normal 6.22 DOS when selected.
Click to expand...

I don't quite get what you mean there. You installed it on a new HD D: so it became a dual-boot ? I was using a "Microsolutions Backpack CD " drive in all attempts to install. Both on the HP Omnibook and the Compaq Lte Lite. The MS$ W95 install cd has "For distribution only with a new PC" and could be read by set-up. For the Omnibook I first tried an installation from a site with an W-95 installation which was for the Omnibook 4000 which also had the BIOS upgrade on it. It also proceeded to the same point as the MS$ cd before bowing out.

I can't remember now whether I had any problems with installing the Compaq BIOS upgrade but am becoming more convinced there was some sort of thing in both the HP and Compaq LT BIOS' that is preventing the upgrade. There are many on both computers happily using it. I'd used the W95 install cd on many DOS desktop computers with no problems.
I should do a google for why some computers needed a BIOS upgrade to use W95. I keep wondering if someone has come up with a fix for this.

I could of course simply backup all the files and format the beasts, but with no guaranty that W95 would install and the labor that would entail I'll stick with W4WG. I have much more Win3 programs anyways. The main reason was that I figured W95 would have more support for PCMCIA and IRfam and possibly inet protocol.

I might even try converting one or both of the beasts to Linux should the limited CPU speed, ram. and HD space permit.

Lawrence
 
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No, my drive D: was the exact same as yours - a cdrom drive with the Win95 cd in it. Mine is a Micropack Solutions one too, love em.
 
I've had a very similar experience with a Compaq Presario 1610 that came with Win95. I tried to upgrade it with a full install Win98 CD. It gave me that same error message, that there was an existing OS and it could not be upgraded. I used a Win98 Upgrade CD and everything went fine.

So, in my opinion, I would say that you will either have to format the drive and do a full install of Win95, or find a Win95 Upgrade CD.

Kent
 
Yeah it might be worth a try to see if I can find an upgrade W95 cd. The Win95 install I got from the private OmniBook site was specificly for installing over W4WG on a stock OB4000 so I was hopeful it would work. He mentions that the OB can't install W98 so maybe there are issues. Thanks.

Lawrence
 
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