My computer crashed and I have to reinstall Windows 95. I can get into DOS, but not safe mode. I do not want to lose any data, so should I uninstall Windows 95 before reinstalling it, or should I try to reinstall Windows 95 without uninstalling first? Also, how do I install Windows 95 in DOS?
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Boot up with a 95 floppy bootdisk that has cdrom support. (A 98 bootdisk should work OK since that just starts the process.) Watch the lines that show on the screen as it boot up and make a note of the drive letter assigned to the cdrom. Then at the a:\> prompt type ren c:\windows\win.com win.old and enter. That renames win.com so you can use a full version cd in what is essentially an upgrade.
Then with the 95 cd in the cdrom type X:\win95\setup and enter, where X: is the cdrom drive letter indicated when you booted up. That starts the installation.
At some point it’ll ask what directory to install windows in. It’ll default to WINDOWS.000 because it detects you already have a directory named WINDOWS. Backspace over the .000 so that WINDOWS.000 now shows as just WINDOWS. That way everything will reinstall in your original directory instead of creating a fresh installation in another directory.
The rest of the installation should preceed normally.
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If you uninstall Win95, you may remove things from the registry that you’d need for your programs to work properly. Try reinstalling Win95 over top of itself first (it may or may not work). Reinstalling through DOS would likely require using a boot floppy as well.