I have to ask the question again.

[capman21]

I have a XP drive that I am trying to install WIN98 on it. I am sticking my win98 cd in, and going to a: fdisk and partioning the drive and than formating. I than recheck and it is FAT32. Some are going to say you cant remove the NTSF partion this way well I also used DELPART to remove it. So I did it both ways. Reboot pc and I my cd contents is on r: drive. Why in the world is this? Anyway I do retup.exe and it says this program cant run in DOS. What, and why? Each time I reboot I reboot to the cd, and I have three options 1.restore windows.will format 2. restore windows will not formay 3. goto dos(or something like that) If I choose 1 or 2 it says "verfying syst. info..incorrect system type". I cannot belive I am having this mych trouble. I have installed win98 before, and even just finished a semester of this stuff. Am I forgetting to copy something to the c drive. I am completely stumped. Now why do this? I am putting this drive in a old pc thats less than 1 ghz.

[Bjs]

Yes , you havent killed it completely .

Delpart dose kill of ntfs partitions , that's right , it's my way of aka the thing's out , but you turn the pc off afterwood's .
Seeing's how your online ... go to the manufacturer's website for the hard drive affected and grab there new hd install tool .
Some have a bootable iso which is handy , burn it with nero or imgburn .

Insert cd into affected pc , and reboot , and wait .
Now the problem here ... there seem's to have been a change in the tool's of late .

I have the older version , and it allow's me , or rather , restrict's me from making partition's greater than 37gig , or somewhere around that area ... I think the bootbale linux ultimate boot cd has them still , but they may have updated those by now .

So you format the drive to fat32 , then before you restart the pc , eject the cd and put win98 ... se I hope , in to it , and do the install ... followed by the system / hardware driver install ... once all is well you can install winxp , allow it to make the duel boot system , so you have access to both .

Mine'd you , that's not the way I prefer to do it , but to each their own I say ... no dictation here ... it's banned ... or I'd kick my own a***

[capman21]

See thats what I was figureing, that NTFS wasnt completely removed. All I want on the drive is Win98, so do everything you mentioned except the last part installing XP?

[RabidDog]

Get disk drake images (linux formatting prog) but get bootable floppy disk images, make some bootable floppy disks and reformat your hard disk that way, after booting into disk drake.
Better yet, borrow a disk partitioning program CD (partiton mgr 6,7, 8 ) and boot off that. a low level format of your disk on another Pc would also work.

[bigstusexy]

You don't need extravagent tools, if you are putting on 98 after NT or linux you need to change the Master boot record. fdisk /mbr

If that isn't working for you try ranish partition manager. http://www.ranish.com/part/ and select the master boot record, and change the system ipl (I think that what it calls it) to standard.

[GKar]

Maxtor drives have a Maxblast utility for partition/formatting their drives.

http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/Maxtor/menuitem.3c67e325e0a6b1f6294198b091346068/?ch...&downloadID=57

Seagate has Discwizard.

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/discwizard

Western Digital has data lifeguard.

http://support.wdc.com/download/downloadxml.asp

These will wipe out the drive (vendor specific) and allow you to set it up the way you want

[capman21]

Ok I download Western Digital Data Lifeguard Tools 11.2 for Windows. Says save to desktop and open and run. Third option is partion. When I try to partion it the box I need to check is grayed out, and in the help files it says you cannont partion the drive with windows on it. Did I download the wrong one? Did I need to download the bootable cd image one, and boot into cd as first choice. Ignore what I wrote. I am going to try what Bjs said and download the bootable version of Lifeguard Tools 11.2

[Bjs]

If you run into that problem I listed before , with the tool's being updated , and that problem you ran into , I still have the original program I used that allows you to create multiple partition's .

The program's actually tell you to reboot the system when done , but knowing how this used to be done in the old day's , I prefer the thing to actually turn off before continuing to load the os .

I forgot to include :

Ain't it a pain in the a*** that new pc's don't come with floppy drive's these day's , even though it's a legacy device still in the bios ... rather lamo considering the number of these tool's still go "please insert floppy disk 1 ... hit any key when ready" .

Well , I'll be buggered if I can find that rotten any key ... an old joke I know

And ms has made the decision that when the next os come's out , all pc's must be able to load from the cdrom only ... lame bunch of freak's ... still cant get crap sorted .

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If you want to mess with someone's mind and be really annoying , create a shortcut to a file from a floppy , a cd , or network source that only exists right now , place it in the , start , program's list , then right click it , choose properties , choose hidden , apply , ok .

It will annoy the crap out of them as to what the blaze's is wrong with the pc every time they go from start , program's ... what the blaze's ??? .

I ran across a friend's pc that had this habit ... drove me nutt's ... then when I found out why , I just looked at him and started laughing , and called him a silly clot as to what the problem was .

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Edit :

I forgot to mention , under the test's I have run between xp's install preprep , and the manufacturer's preprep tool's , drive's run cooler if the manufacturer's tool's are used to prep the unit's , and you get both option's for ntfs or fat32 .

As for the tool's for confirming if the drive is becoming faulty , from the manufacturer's ... there complete crap , bogus .

I have had different brand's of hard drive's turn up over the year's all with various degree's of symptom's of early failure , and the tool's say nothings wrong

There's a bootable linux called insert that has a linux test tool for hd's that when used with the correct setting's will flog the a-hole out of any hd ... seriously ... it's a jet taking off ... compare the result's with the spec's sheet from the manufacturer ... if their out by more than 8% , the drive is on it's way for sure .

[GKar]

Ok I download Western Digital Data Lifeguard Tools 11.2 for Windows. Says save to desktop and open and run. Third option is partion. When I try to partion it the box I need to check is grayed out, and in the help files it says you cannont partion the drive with windows on it. Did I download the wrong one? Did I need to download the bootable cd image one, and boot into cd as first choice. Ignore what I wrote. I am going to try what Bjs said and download the bootable version of Lifeguard Tools 11.2

Yes you need to download the image and create either a floppy or a cd. Clearing your hard disk completely and reformat/partition needs to be done from the O/S (DOS of some sort)provided on the bootable image. Maxblast cd/floppy that I use is run in DOS. Its easy just boot with the floppy or cd and follow the menus.

[capman21]

Crap!!! Well that didnt work. I used delpart and deleted the partion, than booted into the Western Digital Data Lifeguard Tools 11.2 boot disc. Than I partioned/formated the HD using Western Digital Data Lifeguard Tools 11.2. It said it was FAT32. Comes up with insert win98 boot disk. Dont have that, but says insert win98 disc. It comes up with cant load a:\command.com. I than turn pc off reboot back into win98 go to fdisk and check again and it is FAT32. I try one of the options 1.install win98 will format HD, or 2. install win98 will format. Doesnt mattetr which I choose because it says "wrong system info" I am beyond sick of messing with this!!

[GKar]

I'm not sure what you need, but you can try one of the win98 boot disk images on this site, maybe it will help:

http://freepctech.com/pc/002/files010.shtml

Boot with the floppy (it should have generic cdrom drivers), then type (drive letter for win98 cd) setup.exe


Microsofts Installing Windows 98 help:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/221829

[Bjs]

Yes , that pain has popped up ... did you download this ... http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/download.html , it's a 140mbs iso , packed with a lot of feature's , including the tool I used ... and last time I used it did not ask for the os disk ... maybe they saw this as an issue , and included this in the updated version ...

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I have a few hundred cd's here , and I'll investigate on a work around for user's to bypass the issue and post it up as a boot cd guide, if this is the case ... I love breaking this bs apart these day's .

[capman21]

I will give it another shot this weekend I guess. It has completley drove me crazy trying to figure this out.