I am attempting to resore an operating system to a newly formatted
hard drive.  When I boot from the restore disk, (W95) I get the
following error message: "Cannot open an input file.  Error in reading
an input file. (Error 1)"  The screen then gives me an "A:\>" prompt. 
Where do I go from here?

Thanks for your help.

Chris Nelson

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Request for Question Clarification by feilong-ga on 18 Oct 2003 16:38 PDT

Hi Chris,

What OS are you trying to reinstall?

Are you using a CD Installer?

-Feilong

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Request for Question Clarification by sublime1-ga on 18 Oct 2003 18:50 PDT

cnel...

What program was used to create the restore disks you have,
and did that program run in DOS or Windows to create the disks?

If you used the Windows 95 Backup program to backup your system
prior to formatting the hard drive, the file which the Restore
program is looking for is on the last disk in the backup set.
However, I believe you need to run Windows Backup from Windows,
so you would need to reinstall Windows on your formatted disk
and then run Windows Restore from Windows.

If you used MS-DOS backup, be warned that, if you restore the
files using DOS, filenames longer than 8 letters will be
truncated with a tilde (~) as in 'Micros~3' for Microsoft Office.
Trust me, you don't want to do this.

Let me know a little more, and perhaps this can be resolved.

sublime1-ga

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Request for Question Clarification by hummer-ga on 19 Oct 2003 06:14 PDT

Hi Chris,

If you are using a W95 boot floppy, you will need to give it
instructions on where to find your CD drive.

1. Insert your boot floppy, and enable CD support if asked.
2. Insert W95 CD into CD drive.
3. Type " D: " and press Enter (or whatever letter your CD drive is)
4. Type " CD \win95 " and press Enter
5. Type " setup " and press Enter. 

You'll find a good explanation here and also instructions on how to
make a boot disk with CD support:
http://www.everythingcomputers.com/windows_boot_disk.htm

Please let us know if that solves it. Thanks, hummer

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Clarification of Question by cnel-ga on 23 Oct 2003 06:54 PDT

Hello, Everyone:

Sorry for the delay in responding... been working a lot, and resting
to recover therefrom.

Thank you for all the suggestions.  I used a W98 startup disk, and a
different hard drive...m (an old 4gig that I had saved after
upgrading.)  Booted into W98, and found everything working on the old
drive.

At this point don't know if booting from the floppy did the trick, or
the presence of the other HD, but I reached my objective of starting
the old computer, without having to reinstall W95 from the
manufacturer's restore disk, then upgrade that restore to W98.  I'll
take the newer 10 gig HD, and attempt to install it in our Dell, for
backup.  I reformatted the 10 gig, and I assume it is a blank slate,
so I am hoping the Dell will recognize it as another drive,

Thanks for all your help.

Chris Nelson

The windows 95 boot disk doesn't have cd support. Try a win98 of winMe
boot disk. you can get it on the internet, of from somebody with said
operation system. it sounds daft to want a newer boot disk than your
operation system (which i'm assuming is win95), but it's the easiest
way.

once you've done this, and started with cd support, you should be
ready to install from your win95 cd. stick it in the drive. if you
were watching carefully, you might have noticed which drive letter was
assigned to the cd-drive (it's usually one higher than the ram-drive).
if not, it's trial and error - usually d: or e: though. you can change
drive by typing something like:

d:<return>

to check the contents of a folder, type:

dir<return>

you will probably recognise the contents of the win95 cd. among other
ms operating system type files, it'll have setup.exe on it. run it
like this:

setup<return>

...ahem