W98SE Installed on Hard Drive After Used for XP Pro

[oscarmint]

Hello everyone, I am replacing the hard drive in my old Compaq Deskpro and trying to reinstall W98SE. The drive I am trying to use had XP Pro installed on it before. It briefly ran on this same computer in dual boot with 98SE. When I boot up with the 98SE CD, setup gives a message saying the hard drive is defective or not working. When the XP Pro CD is put back into the CD-ROM drive it starts to install as if there is not an issue with the hard drive. I did delete the partitions on  the hard drive using the XP Pro  CD but did not actually uninstall the program or reformat the drive. I know XP normally uses NTFS and the 98SE typically uses FAT32. Could you please advise me on how to format the drive to  FAT32 if that’s the correct format. Actually I’m only guessing incorrect formatting is causing the issue so if you have some suggestions or ideas please let me know.  I would greatly appreciate any input you have and of course be happy to furnish any additional information needed.

Thank you,

Oscar

Model; Compaq Deskpro EP/SB Series
Processor; 500 MHz Intel Pentium III
Board; Compaq 041Ch
Board SN; 6008CJN7B813
BIOS; Compaq 686T2@ 02/10/99
OS; Windows 98 SE
Sys Serial No. 6008CJN7B813
Bus Adapter; Intel 8237AB/EB PCI to USB Universal
Host Controller
Drives; Generic floppy, 3.5 in. & CD-ROM
INTEL AGP SET, FW82443BX, L001IB36, SL2VH
INTEL mc ‘98

[CherylG]

Try booting with a utilty cd to remove partitions/ format hdd. I have had good results with the free Partition Wizard .Download the Bootable CD iso here .Get ImgBurn here to burn the image to cd.

[oscarmint]

Thanks for your input. Used the utility cd and it seemed to work ok. When I tried to install the W98SE I got the same error message as before, similiar to "No hard drive, hard drive not functing correctly, or it requires a special device dirver". Do not under stand use of the Imgburn in what I trying to do here so maybe that's part of what keeping things from working. Actually the program did not want to boot on my 98se machine.If some one has any more ideas or has a suggestion of what I may have done incorrectly here please let me know. Thanks much.

Oscar

[CherylG]

Did you format the hdd Fat 32 with the Partition Wizard utiltiy cd? What size is the hdd you are having problems with?

[oscarmint]

Did format the hdd to Fat 32 using the Partition Wizard utility. The hdd is a Fujitsu 17.3 GB. The Wizard seemed to run ok. Thought of just wiping the hdd with the Wizard and starting over but I'm just grabbing at straws. If you have any suggestions or ideas  I'd be glad to hear them. Thank you.

Oscar 

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi, Oscar:

If you have a floppy drive and the Win98 SE startup floppy disk, you can remove all partitions using the FDISK command. Then you can create a new DOS partition and format it.

In FDISK you first have to delete the non-DOS partition which was the NTFS one. Then go ahead and delete the DOS partition(s).

Create a new partition. Enable large disk support and then format it.

If you don't have the SE boot disk you can download the file and create the boot disk at the link below.

http://bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm  Select the Win 98SE OEM disk.

Then you can use this disk to install Win 98SE.

You have to let the floppy disk load the CD ROM drivers. Then put the 98SE disk in your CD drive. You will be at the A:\ prompt when the boot disk is done loading files. Change the directory  to D:\ or whatever the name is for your CD drive (it probably is D:\)

At the D:\ prompt, type in  Setup   Hit the enter key, and Win 98 should begin to install.

Paul

[oscarmint]

Hello everyone. So far haven’t been able to boot up using the boot98 floppy (846kb) down loaded the from bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm(great info here), selected 98SE OEM. Downloaded this file to my desk top then copied to a floppy also downloaded directly to a floppy. Message from my Compaq when booted up is, “1782 Disk Controller Failure” with F1 boot option. With the boot98 floppy in place and hitting the F1 message is “No system disk or disk error replace and hit any key”. When a key is hit the same message comes up again. Of course this keeps repeating.  Don’t know if it is relevant but one floppy the computer will respond to somewhat is a MS-DOS start-up disk just made from my other desk top a Compaq 7100 running XP Pro. The A:\> prompt will come up but the computer doesn’t respond to any DOS command used so far except to say invalid command or invalid drive. Did verify the 17.3 GB drive being used is formatted FAT32 except one small partition of 8mb would not format to FAT32 but FAT. Could not delete the 8mb partition using the Partition Wizard, it keeps reappearing. Verified this using the XP Pro install cd and checking the drive with Partition Wizard Utility used earlier. I’m going to retry this install again later this week end maybe see a basic error I’m making.  Thank you for your input and if you have some further comments and ideas please let me hear them.

Thank you,

Oscar

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

I don't know why that disk won't boot but another will.

I know if you can get FDISK to work, you will be able to remove all partitions including the 8 MB one.

Maybe try the WIN 98 (non SE download).  You just need to get FDisk and Format to to work and then boot again to let it load the CD driver.

Paul

[CherylG]

The files from bootdisk.com are disk images. Download the file to your C: drive, put a  disk in your A: drive, then click on the file to create the bootdisk.You can't just copy the file to floppy.

Online tutorial on using boot floppy:

http://pcnineoneone.com/howto/clean3/

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi, Oscar:

Cheryl is correct. That could be a reason the disk isn't working for you.

The instructions to create the boot disks are on the bottom of the page, which is why I didn't provide any info on what to do regarding actually making the boot disk.

"1. Most of the files above are disk images. Download the file to your C: drive, put a fresh disk in your A: drive, then click on the file to create the bootdisk."

I hope that was the reason the disk isn't working for you.

That's an easy fix.

Paul