Installing Windows

[jedivaughn]

Hi everyone,

I wondering how I would install windows 98 on an old machine I have sitting around. I have a valid liscenes for the OS so no problems there. Here is the current state of the machine. 12 GB hard disk formatted to NTFS as a 12 GB sector with absolutely nothing on it. When I stick in the windows 98 CD it boots into the setup and asks me to either "Format the Hard Drive" or "Exit Setup". If I choose format hard drive it returns the following error "Setup cannot install windows 98 on your computer. An Error was detected while fomatting your primary hard disk partition. Press enter to Continue" It then leads you to a cmd type interface. I tried formatting the hard drive using the fdisk command and deleting the partition but as far as I can see it is impossible. To reformat it I have to type in the volume label which contains charecters that I have no clue how to type on the keyboard (i.e. up arrows, down arrows accented letters, upside down U etc.)

Does anybody have any idea what to do to install the OS or a tool to format the hd without typeing in the volume label?

Thanks,

John

The Computer Does have a floopy and CD drive

[-pops-]

Assuming you have more than one machine, put the hard drive you want to format as a slave in another machine and format in FAT 32 from that using the facility available in Disc Management.

If you know the make of the drive you want to format, you could go to the manufacturers website and download their "low level" formatting facility which you can then use to return the drive back to its unformatted "as new" condition for installing W98.

[r4may]

W98 does not recognise the NTFS file format so reformat the drive as pops suggests or use a W98 boot floppy to re configure the drive.

[Gagaman]

or use a W98 boot floppy to re configure the drive.

You can dl one here: http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm