# Solved: Setup program cannot run in dos mode



## n3vino (Jan 22, 2005)

I am trying to help a Charter school with 4 donated P3, Dell computers. The donor reformated the HD and supplied a windows 98 bootable floppy and a CD with windows 98.

The problem is that the floppy looks for setup files on Drive D but the CD rom drive letter has changed to drive E and I assume because it created a RAM drive with letter D bumping up the CD drive to letter E.

Looks like the floppy assumes that there is a windows operating system on in because says that if setup does not work to click on run and do D:setup. The problem is that there is no windows operating system on these computers. So while in dos mode I enter A:>E:\setup. I also tried E:setup and setup.exe but nothing works. 

The response comes back and says "This program cannot be run in DOS mode"

I can do a dir on A:, C:, and E: so I know the computer is booted. I believe that I also tried to boot from CD but it appears the windows 98 cd is not bootable. I wonder is this is an upgrade to windows 98 setup.

Is there anyway around this? Please note, these were used in a business environement so I don't know what dell supplied with these PC's. The school is trying to get more info. 
Thanks.


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## kimmer13 (Nov 28, 2001)

Dell PC's come with a sticker on them that has the pc's id reference number. Nowadays Dell calls it an "Express Service Code", but depending on how old the PC's are, the sticker may call it something different. Anyway, the code on the sticker can be used on the Dell support site to find out any info you need on the hardware they identify.

Is the CD you have a copy of Win98 or the original? If its the original it would say 'upgrade' on it if that's what it is. 

Try this: at the c: prompt type xcopy E:\i386 and press enter. Then restart the pc without the floppy or the cd in. Move to C:\i386 and run setup from there.


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## n3vino (Jan 22, 2005)

Thanks for the reply. The Win98 CD is a licenced CD but I don't remember seeing upgrade on it. I'll double check that. I'll try the xcopy. 

Once the xcopy is done, the i386 files should be on Drive C, the pc should reboot from Drive C, and the setup will use the files on Drive C to install windows98. Is this correct? 

Thank you very much for you help.


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## Bob Cerelli (Nov 3, 2002)

You need to run the setup program that is in the directory with the source files, not the one on the root of the CD. That is for running from within Windows, which is why you are getting the error message that it can't be run from DOS.

If you have Win98, then likely this is not any i386 directory. That would be for a NT based operating system like Windows2000 or XP. Try looking instead for a \win98 or \win98se directory on the CD. From there you should be able to run the setup program.


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## kimmer13 (Nov 28, 2001)

thanks bob, you are right. the cd directory is win98 (even on my 2nd ed cd). i just put it into i386 on my pc......... sorry about that n3vino. so you will xcopy e:\win98 to c: and yes, then w/o floppy or cd, restart and run setup from the directory on your c: drive and it will use those copied files to install from.


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## Bob Cerelli (Nov 3, 2002)

If you are going to copy the OS source files to a directory on your hard drive, I would still recommend using the a directory the same name as the OS. Using an i386 directory (typically for NT based OS's) for Win9x can be a little misleading.


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## n3vino (Jan 22, 2005)

Thank you all for all your help. I plan on going to the school today and trying out the methods you have suggested. 

I'll keep you posted on the results.


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## n3vino (Jan 22, 2005)

I went to the school and It would not work. Here's what I found. The Cd is for "Distribution with a new PC". But it appears that the Floppy and the CD are not a match. 

I checked the autoexec.bat file on the floppy and it looks like it does not care what the CD Rom drive letter is, as I originally thought. But it is looking for a win98 directory ("cd \win98"), and the message I get is that win98 files were not found. 

In looking at the CD there is no win98 directory. There is a setup directory but setup will not run from dos. There is also an NT45p3 directory and in that directory there is a I368 directory. E:\nt45p3\i386. It appears that this is where all the setup files are but I could not get anything to run from DOS. I could not get the xcopy to work either. But I wonder that if it did not run in DOS from CD if it would run in DOS from C:

The Floppy does have instructions written on it. If setup does not work, to click on start go to run and enter D:\setup. Of course I could not do that because there is no Windows on the pc. I also set the bios to boot from CD but it bypassed it and went on to boot from A: I guess there were no boot files on the CD.

I guess the next thing is to contact the donor and see if they can shed some light on this and make sure they provided the original floppy and/or software that comes with a PC.

Thank you all very much. All your information was very helpful in that it showed me what to look for.


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## n3vino (Jan 22, 2005)

I found this on the web. It looks a lot like the autoexec.bat file I was using on the setup floppy. Looks like it's not finding something on the CD or not finding the CD Rom which was bumped up to E:

Contents of the Autoexec.bat file - 

@ECHO OFF
set EXPAND=YES
SET DIRCMD=/O:N
cls
set temp=c:\
set tmp=c:\
path=a:\

IF "%config%"=="NOCD" GOTO QUIT
LH MSCDEX.EXE /Demcd001 /L

echo.
IF "%config%"=="SETUP_CD" goto AUTOSETUP
GOTO QUIT

:AUTOSETUP
set CDROM=FOO23
FINDCD.EXE
if "%CDROM%"=="FOO23" goto NOCDROM
path=a:\;%CDROM%\
%CDROM%
cd \WIN98
echo.
OEMSETUP.EXE
goto QUIT

:NOCDROM
echo.
echo The Windows 98 Setup files were not found.
echo.

:QUIT


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## Bob Cerelli (Nov 3, 2002)

Having a directory on the CD like "E:\nt45p3\i386" sure looks like it is NT4 with Service Pack 3, not Win98. Are you sure you got the correct CD's for what you want to do?


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## n3vino (Jan 22, 2005)

Bob, 

I don't believe that I have the right CD. What you say that it looks like an nt4 Cd makes more sense. I should have looked at the Lettering on the CD a little closer and not the sleeve that it was in to see what I was really working with. I gave that info to the school and hopefully they contact the folks that donated those PC's. 

The pc's came from a business environment so either the CD or the floppy is the wrong one. At least now we know what the problem is. Thanks a lot for all your help.


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## Bob Cerelli (Nov 3, 2002)

If you want Win98 and have a NT4 CD, you at least have the wrong CD's.

I have a section with instructions for creating a boot disk at:
http://www.onecomputerguy.com/install/floppies.htm

There is also the generic one which you can download and extract at:
http://www.onecomputerguy.com/software/win98_img.exe

There are a lot of the DOS utilities there that don't normally get added when you make one from Win98. For example Diskcopy, Doskey, Format, More, Sys, Edit, Chkdsk, Deltree, Extract, Fdisk, Attrib, Label, Mem, Scandisk, Scanreg, Smartdrv and Xcopy.

Not only are there more utilities on there but it starts much faster since it doesn't have to create the RAM disk and then expand the cab file from the floppy to that RAM disk.

It automatically loads with support for a generic CD ROM and assigns it the drive letter of X:

There is also a CD ROM boot image you can download at:
http://www.onecomputerguy.com/software/win_boot.iso


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