Windows 95 Setup

The Windows 95 Setup process has some pitfalls.

Drive configuration

If you are installing from RTM or OSR 1, where the file system is FAT16, if you are on a greater than 2047 MB size hard disk, don't let Setup automatically configure the disk. Close setup, run FDISK, and have it create a single maximum size primary FAT16 partition. Reboot and continue setup (which will format the partition). If you don't do this, depending on the size of the drive, you'll either get an error right when formatting begins, or the ScanDisk step after formatting will hang when reading the File Allocation Table.

Finishing the Windows 3.1-esque portion

If you are installing from a CD-ROM, don't actually remove the boot media when Setup tells you to. Instead, boot from the Windows 95 Boot Disk, enable CD-ROM support, then load Windows 95 from the hard disk. If you don't, Windows 95 won't be able to find the CD-ROM it needs to copy files from when rebooting into the system for the first time.