Format and Recovery an HP

I am working on a HP Pavilion 6635 - Intel Celeron PII 533Mhz with 64MB RAM running Win 98 - due to major problems I am doing a format and recovery with the provided CD. The first go around it halted the format at 93% and stated to reinstall the default setup but eventually I got a "File allocation table bad error on drive C before completion. Does this mean the hard drive is toast or should I attempt to rerun it again?

Briefly on the problems - the machine locked up alot - it was a friend machine that his kids used mostly and have loaded up with alot of stuff - and therefore was running very slow etc.

I cleaned out the temp files and internet file and cache then ran scan disk - which targeted several files with problems of which it repaired or I uninstalled the program until it finally ran complete.

But when attempting to defrag it would lock-up with me and get an operating system not found error.

hence where I'm at:

Were you formating while in windows?
Did you try a Startup dick and format from the DOS prompt?

Hp Recovery CD requires you to boot to it and yes it is in DOS not windows.

I would get a bootdisk and run scandisk thorough and see what errors/how many bad clusters show up first.

I would get a dos boot disk and first run FDISK and start with a clean system and new partition. Then format. During that process you will uncover any bad disk sectors and designate them as such. Then run the HP recovery CD. Then you know you have a clean system.

But then I do tend to overkill sometimes.