I installed Windows 95 alongside Vista on my 2 GB RAM laptop, and am having a bit of trouble getting it to start. I'll start with the most basic problems:

1. Right now when I choose Win95 from the Vista bootloader (I've set it up, it works OK with MS-DOS), I get an error "Non-system disk or disk error". Only I don't have a floppy drive, and I don't have anything in the CD drive. I would think it's my mouse or headphones, but DOS 6.22 and MS-WIN 3.11 started fine with them connected, and this still occurs with no peripherals connected.

Probably on a SIMILAR problem, when I tried to install Windows 98, I got to 61% of the second step when it said "Please insert a diskette into drive B:" along the top of the screen and wouldn't let me CONTINUE. Not only do I not have a diskette drive, I don't have a "B:" drive, either.

2. Before the above error, I kept getting "Insufficient memory to initialize Windows" errors. I added

Code: [Select]MinFileCache=32768
MaxFileCache=32768
to SYSTEM.INI, after reading Win95 sometimes has trouble with more than 48 MB of memory, but b/c of problem #1 am not yet sure this has fixed it. I'll need about 384 MB eventually as well, hopefully I'll be able to get that.

3. Windows Protection Errors. But I think I need to solve #2 before this one.

The aforementioned "Please insert a diskette into drive B:" is keeping me from upgrading to Windows 98. I think it wants to make a Win98 boot disk when it says this, but I don't really know.

Windows 3.11 was working fine, except in Standard Mode instead of 386 Enhanced Mode. When I tried to setup the Internet, TRUMPET Windsock said I was using 75-80% of my memory - I definitely think it had memory issues, but perhaps was able to fit in 2 MB or 640KB.

Yeah, lots of problems. Had Win3.11 working, maybe I can get back to there and start from square 3 again.

Here's my Autoexec.bat:

Code: [Select]C:\DOS\SMARTDRV.EXE /X
@ECHO OFF
PROMPT $p$g
set mouse=C:\Mouse2
C:\Mouse2\mouse.exe /Q
PATH C:\MOUSE2;C:\DOS;
SET TEMP=C:\DOS
LOADHIGH=C:\DOS\MSCDEX.exe /D:MSCD001

and Config.sys:

Code: [Select]DEVICE=C:\DOS\SETVER.EXE
DEVICE=C:\DOS\HIMEM.SYS
DEVICEHIGH=C:\Dos\oakcdrom.sys /D:MSCD001
DOS=HIGH
FILES=30

MS-DOS was working before I tried the Win95/98 upgrade - somehow it now thinks I have a non-system disk in a floppy drive when I TRY to start it up