Wanting to reinstall W98, but can't...

[Fuelm@n]

I'm wanting to reinstall W98 on an older (about 6 year old) system, but I'm unable to. I have it set to boot from the cd-rom and it starts to, then I receive a message, "PRESS A KEY TO REBOOT" I get no farther. When I press a key, it reboots...

I fdisked the hdd, the system runs a 233 mhz processor, with about (I think) 48 mb of RAM. Any ideas, or suggestions?

Thanks for your time in helping me resolve this issue.

[jmtjet]

Hello Fuelman, you said you fdisked, did you format also? Won't see the drive without a format.

Try a different bootdisk;

http://www.bootdisk.com/

Sometimes a different bootdisk will get it done.

[Calpitor]

Is it possible that your CD maybe scratched? Look here for assistance with repairing scratched CDs

[Cowboy622]

Also, when you format the hard drive it is sometimes better to use the "s" switch so instead of typing "format C:" at the A:\ prompt, you would type "format C: /s" without the quotes. This will put a basic system on the hard drive so you can load Win98 on.

[Fuelm@n]

I downloaded a bootdisk from the bootdisk.com site several days ago and am using one for W98.

I've been using FORMAT C: /s to format the hdd, but I'm getting some message about not being able to find C or something or other. Not exactly sure of the message, I'll check the ide cables later to verify that they are connected correctly...

The disk (w98) doesn't seem scratched, I also tried Win ME, same results. I'll open the case up later when time permits.

Thanks

[Topdog]

From your description of the boot up sequence sounds like it may have some sort of Disk Manager installed, used to get around DOS HDD capacity limitations.
You could try using the "Fdisk /mbr" (no quotes) command. This will overwrite the existing Boot Record and get rid of the offending item.

[Ridgerunr]

Or,,to be sure to start clean. Write zeroes to the drive using the HDD Mfg's utility. If you can't find one from the Mfg.,get KillDisk:
http://www.killdisk.com/eraser.htm

[Eeyore]

I'm with Topdog. 233mhz would indicate a system before 20gb hard drives became common. If the drive is over about 8.4gb, an overlay may be needed. If so, don't FDISK /MBR as that will make the drive unaccessable until a new overlay is installed.

Bootable CDROM's like the Windows 98/ME Setup CD's have to be in the drive when the computer starts. With a floppy, you boot without the floppy until the Disk Ovelay program loads and gives you the option to boot from a floppy disk.

The solution is to get a Windows 98 floppy boot disk as suggested above. Make sure the bios is set to boot from A drive, not the CD. Start the computer with the disk out of the drive. The CD can be in its drive. You should see a message with instructions for floppy disk boot soon after the computer begins to boot. From there you can insert the floppy disk and it should load the CDROM drive. From there you should be able to load Windows.

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[Fuelm@n]

I finally got it installed. After I fdisked, I partitioned the drive and then formated. I couldn't get it to boot correctly with the CD, so I started the PC with the Win98 disk and Boot disk floppy in the drives and did it that route. Went trying to go into setup, thinking the CD-ROM drive was D:, but for some reason it was drive R: which delayed me doing it right the first time. Or at least it went something like that, but it's now a 100% done with driver installations and all. Thanks everyone for the help....

[Train]

You got your bootdisk from www.bootdisk.com where they go into the autoexec.bat and assign R as the drive letter for the cdrom.

Good thing to have.