12 Maintaining and Troubleshooting Your Solo Notebook
Reinstalling Your Windows 95
System
This chapter discusses the process of reinstalling Windows 95. To accomplish the
installation, we recommend that you use the following process:
1.
Remove the hard drive partitions. See “Deleting partitions on the hard drive”
on page 14.
2.
Create new hard drive partitions. See “Creating partitions on the hard drive”
on page 16.
3.
Format the hard drive. See “Formatting the hard drive” on page 18.
4.
Install Windows 95. See “Installing Windows 95” on page 19.
5.
Install device drivers and related software. See “Installing device drivers” on
page 30.
Before starting the reinstall process, make sure you have the necessary diskettes
and/or CDs readily available to partition, format, and install device drivers on the
hard drive. You’ll need the following diskettes:
♦
Solo Boot Diskette to start your system from the A: drive and use menu
options to install your operating system.
♦
Windows 95 CD to load the operating system.
♦
Gateway System CD to install the device drivers.
♦
Gateway Windows 95 Driver diskettes to install recently updated drivers that
may be newer than those on the Gateway System CD.
Partitioning and formatting the hard drive
For an operating system (such as MS-DOS or Windows) to store files on a hard
drive, the hard drive must be partitioned and formatted.
Partitioning a hard drive designates which areas of the disk are used for the
operating system files. Windows uses the MS-DOS partition file fdisk.exe to set
up a primary DOS partition, extended DOS partitions, and logical drives within the
extended DOS partitions.
Warning!
Partitioning and formatting
erases all files on the hard
drive. Before partitioning or
formatting the hard drive,
make sure any software that
you may need is backed up.
