Installing W98 over XP

  • Thread starter Thread starter Laurie
  • Start date Start date
L

Laurie

I bought a used drive that had XP on it but it was "wiped" and found that the
MBR had been corrupted or damaged. Can't install W98 over it.
 
If you have a win98 boot floppy that has fdisk on it you should boot from
the floppy disk and at the prompt type fdisk/mbr. That should repair the
MBR.
Neil
 
Laurie said:
I bought a used drive that had XP on it but it was "wiped" and found that the
MBR had been corrupted or damaged. Can't install W98 over it.
Click to expand...

Reformat to FAT 32; it's most likely NTFS right now.
 
Reformat to FAT 32; it's most likely NTFS right now.
Click to expand...



A clarification here: Laurie needs to *re-partition* (re-FDISK) to
FAT32. Formatting can't change the file system.
 
neil said:
If you have a win98 boot floppy that has fdisk on it you should boot from
the floppy disk and at the prompt type fdisk/mbr. That should repair the
MBR.
Neil
Click to expand...


Laurie:
First of all, it seems reasonable to assume that there is no data that you
need from that HDD and your *only* objective is to make a fresh install of
the Win98 OS. I'm reasonably sure that's the case but I just want to make
absolutely sure of that

That being the case, as you have heard from other responders to your query
you will need a bootable DOS floppy disk that contains the FDISK & FORMAT
commands, commonly known as a DOS Win9x/Me "Startup Disk". Hopefully you
have one at hand but if you don't you can download a program from
http://www.bootdisk.com to create such a floppy disk. (Under certain
circumstances a DOS bootable CD can be used but by & large it's better to
use the floppy disk as long as you have that capability).

Using the FDISK & FORMAT commands you will delete whatever partitions
currently reside on the HDD and then format the newly-created partition(s).
It's a pretty straightforward exercise. I assume you're aware that these
will be FAT32 partitions.

In this case I really do not recommend the "fdisk/mbr" process to get where
you want to go. It's best to start "fresh" as I've indicated in the
paragraph above.

One other thing...
All the above may be worthless information if you're dealing with a
defective disk. It would be wise - if you haven't already done so - to check
out the disk with the HDD diagnostic utility available from the drive's
manufacturer.
Anna
 
A clarification here: Laurie needs to *re-partition* (re-FDISK) to
FAT32. Formatting can't change the file system.
Click to expand...

Actually the file system is created when the formating is done, not when
the partitions are created. FDISK can create partitions but it cannot
give them any particular file system, that will be done by the formating
utility. Laurie will have to use FDISK to delete and create new
partitions if the old disk contains NTFS partitions, but the actual file
system will be created when the disk is formated with the format
utility. If Laurie were to mount the disk in a Windows 2000/XP system,
or boot with a Windows 2000/XP setup cd, and providing that the disk
were smaller than 32GB, then the disk could be formated (from NTFS) to
FAT32 without any repartitioning. The disk could also be reformated
without repartitioning by using third party utilities. The sole reason
that Laurie would need to use FDISK is because the Windows 98 setup
utilities cannot recognize NTFS drives thus it cannot reformat them.
Just a small correction, but we know what you meant, Laurie cannot
reformat NTFS disks without recreating the partitions if she is using a
Windows 98 setup disk, but formating can and does change the file system.

John
 
I already fdisked it and Fat 32 formatted it using the W98 boot disk, but the
error message I get when I actually try to install W98 afterward is that the
boot sector is unreadable. The drive is 40Gb according to the bios but the
partitioning information says it has partitioned only 38Gb, +/-.
 
I already fdisked it and Fat 32 formatted it using the W98 boot disk, but the
error message I get when I actually try to install W98 afterward is that the
boot sector is unreadable.
Click to expand...


That sounds like it may well be a physical problem with the drive
itself.

The drive is 40Gb according to the bios but the
partitioning information says it has partitioned only 38Gb, +/-.
Click to expand...



All hard drive manufacturers define 1GB as 1,000,000,000 bytes, while
the rest of the computer world, including Windows, defines it as 2 to
the 30th power (1,073,741,824) bytes. So a 40 billion byte drive is
actually around 38GB. Some people point out that the official
international standard defines the "G" of GB as one billion, not
1,073,741,824. Correct though they are, using the binary value of GB
is so well established in the computer world that I consider using the
decimal value of a billion to be deceptive marketing.
 
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