The A+ Certification & PC Repair Handbook (Charles River Media Networking/Security)

Manufacturers of operating systems provide minimum and recommended hardware specifications that should be considered before installing or upgrading an OS.

The current A+ Operating Systems Technologies exam is not likely to focus on specific questions about the amount of memory or hard disk space required to install a particular OS. Instead, it will most likely focus on operating system installation processes and the techniques used to troubleshoot or debug failed installations.

Before You Start

The following steps should be considered in preparation for a full Windows 9x installation or an upgrade from a previous version of DOS or Windows.

First, you should always check the manufacturer’s recommended hardware requirements for a Windows operating system installation. Do not count on study guides or books for this information. For some reason, all operating systems seem to have their own special set of specifications.

Second, verify that you are using the correct CD-ROM for your choice of operating system installation or upgrade. Windows 9x is available in many versions, as stated in Chapter 23. A full Windows 9x installation can be performed on a blank hard drive without a previously installed OS, but an upgrade requires the presence of a previously installed Windows version. OEM operating system releases, such as the Windows 95 OEM release, are designed for specific systems and do not work as a full installation on all systems.

Next, consult the Microsoft Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) at: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/hcl/search.mspx to see if your hardware is supported by the Windows operating system you want to install.

Finally, you should consider the type of file system that will be used to support the OS.

If you are going to do a full installation or an upgrade to Windows 95B or Windows 98, you should consider configuring your hard disk as FAT32 in order to take advantage of its many benefits. Some of the benefits of FAT32 include 4K cluster sizes that make better use of the hard disk’s space. Smaller 4K cluster sizes increase the overall storage efficiency and file-access speed of the disk. FAT32 makes better use of system resources than FAT16, which in turn provides better use of storage. FAT32 also allows for the ability to support more than 65,535 files with fewer resources.

If you plan to install Windows 9x, it is best to install Windows 98 SE. It has many advantages over its predecessors, Windows 95 and Windows 98. It can handle larger hard drives and support newer technologies, such as USB, FireWire, and Internet connection sharing.

If you need to maintain backward compatibility with older versions of DOS and Windows, you need to configure for dual booting scenarios; or if you plan on installing the original version of Windows 95 that doesn’t support FAT32, you should configure your system for FAT16. However, if you configure a partition using FAT16, you will not be able to take advantage of features such as encryption and disk quotas that are offered in newer operating systems.

Windows 98 comes with a powerful FAT32 drive conversion utility program called Drive Converter, which has the ability to convert an already formatted FAT16 partition into a FAT32 or NTFS partition. The only caveat here is that it is said to be impossible to go back to FAT16 once the Drive Converter program has been run and the partition has been converted. (With a partitioning tool like Power Quest Partition Magic 7.0, you can convert back to FAT16 if you like.) Keep in mind that the correct order of preparing a hard disk before a Windows 9x installation is to partition with FDISK, format the drive, and finally reboot the system.

Installation or Upgrade Process

The processes for installing Windows 9x to a blank hard drive or upgrading from an earlier version of Windows 9x are almost the same. The only exceptions are in the early stages of the installation or upgrade processes. Installing a full version of Windows 9x requires you to first format and partition the drive. After you have prepared the hard drive for a new operating system, all you have to do is run the SETUP.EXE program from the Windows 9x installation CD-ROM. You may need a boot disk that contains your particular CD-ROM drivers in order to support the CD-ROM device. For the test, remember that the minimum files required on a boot disk to support a CD-ROM device are AUTOEXEC.BAT, COMMAND.COM, and MSCDEX.EXE. It is also recommended that you have the following files on a high-density 1.44MB boot disk for troubleshooting and diagnostic purposes:

• IO.SYS

• MSDOS.SYS

• SYS.COM

• EDIT.COM

• ATTRIB.EXE

• REGEDIT.EXE

• CHKDSK.EXE

• SCANDISK.EXE

• UNINSTAL.EXE

• FDISK.EXE

• FORMAT.EXE

• EDB.SYS

If you are performing an upgrade of Windows, simply place the Windows 9x upgrade CD-ROM into the CD-ROM drive under the current version of Windows. You will be presented with the Windows 9x upgrade prompt. Here is where it all comes together. At this point, the install or upgrade processes are basically identical. Both methods check the system for the minimum set of requirements necessary for the installation or upgrade to continue. After a restart, you are presented with the Windows Setup Wizard Setup Options menu, which gives you the option of choosing a Typical, Portable, Compact, or Custom setup type. After you choose the setup type you want, you are prompted with the Windows Product Key screen. Enter the Product Key, excluding any dashes, and click the next radio button.

Next, you are prompted to select a directory in which Windows is to be installed. By default, the C:\WINDOWS directory is selected for you. If you are upgrading from Windows 95 to Windows 98, you must install Windows 98 to the same directory that contained your previous Windows 95 files; otherwise, Windows 98 installs itself without consideration of the existing settings and applications, leaving them useless. Now you are asked if you wish to create a start-up disk. This step can be bypassed; a start-up disk can be created from the Add/Remove Software option in the Control Panel after the installation is complete.

From there, you go on to network options, starting with the option to configure the NIC. In practice, it is probably better to bypass this option and configure the NIC and network settings after the Windows 98 upgrade has been completed. At this point, a huge copying phase takes place, followed by the hardware detection phase. The Windows 98, PnP features make this phase quite painless. After all that, the point you will need to remember for the exam is that the upgrade from Windows 95 to Windows 98 is considered the easiest of all upgrades.

Installation Log Files

Windows 9x keeps track of problems that may arise with the setup process in a group of log files stored in the root directory. These log files keep track of devices detected during the installation process, as well as successes and failures associated with the various stages of the installation process. The main installation log files are the following:

SETUPLOG.TXT: A log of the entire setup process, it tracks all successes and failures that occur during installation. It is a good tool for finding the last process that may have failed and caused the system to halt.

DETLOG.TXT: This log file keeps a record of all hardware detected. It is a viewable version of DETCRASH.LOG.

DETCRASH.LOG: This is an unreadable log file that is created if setup fails during the hardware-detection phase. If the entire setup process completes without error, this file is removed from the system.

BOOTLOG.TXT: This logs all device drivers and programs during the installation.

NETLOG.TXT: This log file is used to track the network portion of setup.