Win 98 Format

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aeromach - 29 May 2005 09:19 GMT

One of my friends has a Pentium I 133MHz machine with a 1.2 Gigs Hard disk
and 32 MB RAM. In his Cmos setup screen, the id for primary master and slave
is none. He can't install win98, when he hits setup from this bootable disk
it says File system is HPFS or NTFS. I can't use FDISK... shows 'No Fixed
Disk Present'. What to do? Any ideas... Win2k or XP can't be installed (64MB
Ram Min). C: shows invalid drive, a: (dir/p) shows up any random list of
files and folders when no floppy is present.

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Don Phillipson - 29 May 2005 12:06 GMT

> One of my friends has a Pentium I 133MHz machine with a 1.2 Gigs Hard disk
> and 32 MB RAM. In his Cmos setup screen, the id for primary master and slave
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
> Ram Min). C: shows invalid drive, a: (dir/p) shows up any random list of
> files and folders when no floppy is present.

Win98 cannot read NTFS directories.
If Win98 FDISK cannot remove the NTFS partition,
see whether XP FDISK can do so. Then boot
Win98 from a floppy, FDISK and FORMAT.

Signature

Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)

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aeromach - 29 May 2005 15:44 GMT

From where to use XP Fdisk? Is it there in the XP boot disk (the one we
create from Format Floppy Screen). Also, I tried to format the machine with
the MS WinXP setup but it says less than 64 Megs of RAM!!

> > One of my friends has a Pentium I 133MHz machine with a 1.2 Gigs Hard disk
> > and 32 MB RAM. In his Cmos setup screen, the id for primary master and
[quoted text clipped - 11 lines]
> see whether XP FDISK can do so. Then boot
> Win98 from a floppy, FDISK and FORMAT.

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mdp - 29 May 2005 19:55 GMT

Try here:

http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm

> From where to use XP Fdisk? Is it there in the XP boot disk (the one we
> create from Format Floppy Screen). Also, I tried to format the machine
[quoted text clipped - 19 lines]
>> see whether XP FDISK can do so. Then boot
>> Win98 from a floppy, FDISK and FORMAT.

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Mikhail Zhilin - 29 May 2005 13:01 GMT

Enter BIOS setup again, and see if there is an item 'HDD Autodetect' at
the right of the initial BIOS screen. If yes -- select this item, and
allow BIOS to detect the drives. Confirm (press Y) if the detection is
correct.

Then press ESC, enter the general settings again, and see if this drive
is here now, as it has to be after Autodetect.

Exit with saving settings after that, boot from the standard Win98
bootable diskette, and run Fdisk.

--
Mikhail Zhilin
http://www.aha.ru/~mwz
Sorry, no technical support by e-mail.
Please reply to the newsgroups only.
======

>One of my friends has a Pentium I 133MHz machine with a 1.2 Gigs Hard disk
>and 32 MB RAM. In his Cmos setup screen, the id for primary master and slave
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
>Ram Min). C: shows invalid drive, a: (dir/p) shows up any random list of
>files and folders when no floppy is present.

Reply to this Message

aeromach - 29 May 2005 15:43 GMT

Yeah HDD Auto detect is there but it gives some error-- Can't auto detect!
Also, I even tried Load Factory Defaults in vain.

> Enter BIOS setup again, and see if there is an item 'HDD Autodetect' at
> the right of the initial BIOS screen. If yes -- select this item, and
[quoted text clipped - 21 lines]
> >Ram Min). C: shows invalid drive, a: (dir/p) shows up any random list of
> >files and folders when no floppy is present.

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Mikhail Zhilin - 29 May 2005 17:14 GMT

Hmm... That means a hardware problem; that may be HDD itself -- but
let's hope the cause is less serious:

Switch the computer off, and check the ribbon cable connection: whether
its connectors sit close in the motherboard and in HDD, whether the
first pins (that is near the red edge of the ribbon cable) connected to
the first pins of motherboard and HDD. If yes -- that may be also, that
the ribbon cable is broken, so try to replace it.

Besides that, if the HDD is Western Digital one, and is the only drive
at the cable -- make sure its Master/Slave jumper is in the third,
"Single" position, or is removed at all.

Don't forget to run Autodetect again after that.

--
Mikhail Zhilin
http://www.aha.ru/~mwz
Sorry, no technical support by e-mail.
Please reply to the newsgroups only.
======

>Yeah HDD Auto detect is there but it gives some error-- Can't auto detect!
>Also, I even tried Load Factory Defaults in vain.
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
>> allow BIOS to detect the drives. Confirm (press Y) if the detection is
>> correct.

<...>

>> >One of my friends has a Pentium I 133MHz machine with a 1.2 Gigs Hard disk
>> >and 32 MB RAM. In his Cmos setup screen, the id for primary master and slave
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
>> >Ram Min). C: shows invalid drive, a: (dir/p) shows up any random list of
>> >files and folders when no floppy is present.

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