Detail Instructions for Fdisking (Partitioning) & Formatting your Hard Drive then Reinstalling Windows 98 or 98 SE
If you have not created a Windows 98 Startup Disk, do so now!
To Create a Windows 98 Startup Disk, Place a clean floppy in your A: drive, and place your Windows 98 CD in your CD Player then click: Start, Settings, Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs Icon, then click the Startup Disk Tab, then Click Create Disk.
HOT NOTE: If you have already formatted your hard drive and don't have access to a computer running Win 98, go to this site: Bootdisk.Com , and download a Win 98 Startup Disk.
Once you have the Startup Disk, While Still Running Windows 98, place Startup disk in your A: drive then copy the file: FORMAT.COM to the disk. For some reason when the Win 98 Startup Disk is created it just doesn't include that file.
To copy the file: FORMAT.COM to the Windows
98 Startup Disk go to Start, Find, and in the Find window type: FORMAT.COM, then
click the Find Now Button. Once
FORMAT.COM is in the Find Windows, Right Click on
the file and select: Send To 3 1/2 Floppy
{A}
After doing that, leave the Startup disk in your A: drive and reboot your computer. After you arrive at the
A:\> prompt (make sure your Win 98 CD is in your CD-ROM drive then type:
E: [Enter]
The reason for typing E: is because when the Windows 98 Startup Disk boots up your computer it creates a
RAM drive on your hard drive that takes up
one drive letter, causing your CD-ROM drive letter to advanced by one letter.
After typing: E: [Enter] you should get an
E:\> prompt. At the E:\>
prompt type: Dir /W [Enter] doing that should cause the contents of the
CD-ROM to be displayed on your screen.
If the files on your Windows 98 CD are displayed on the screen, you can be sure
that you do have CD-ROM access when booting with the Windows 98 Startup Disk. If you do
have access to your CD-ROM, change back to your A:\ drive by typing: A:
[Enter]
VERY SPECIAL NOTE:
Before you Partition and Format your hard drive and do a
clean installation of Windows. Make sure that you have all the drivers for things such as: Modem, Printer,
Video Card, and Sound Card handy because it's more than possible that the version
of Windows that you are installing, won't have the correct drivers for those items and will ask for an
installation disk or CD
for those things.
First you must Fdisk (Partition) your hard drive before you can
Format the
drive..
FDISK
To partition the drive:
Leave the boot disk you created and tested above in your A:
drive as it contains FDISK.EXE.
At the A:\> prompt type: Fdisk
[Enter]
Example: A:\>Fdisk [Enter]
HOT NOTE: If your FDISK.EXE
is from Win 95 B or later
one of the first things that happens is you are asked if you want to Enable Large Disk Support. If
your Hard Drive is over 2 Gig in Size and you only want one large Partition to be
created using FAT32: Answer Yes!
Note: If you have two or more drives in your system, the menu displays five options. Option five allows you to select the drive you want to
partition. Make sure you select the correct drive.
Select create DOS partition or logical Dos drive. Press ENTER.
Select create primary DOS partition. Use the maximum available size for your primary partition and make the partition active for Drive C.
This puts the entire drive on one partition and allows you to load the DOS boot information on the drive. Press ENTER for each subsequent
selection.
After all of the appropriate selections are made, the computer restarts itself.
LEAVE the Boot Disk in the A: drive and wait for it
to reboot then perform a format.
NOTE: If you need more info about using Fdisk, take a look at this site:
How to Use the Fdisk Tool and the Format Tool to Partition or Repartition a Hard Disk
FORMAT
High-level formatting
High-level formatting verifies the information written by the low-level format and builds the file allocation table (FAT) used by DOS to access files on the drive. If you put more than one partition on the drive, you must high-level format each partition.
Use the DOS FORMAT utility to high-level format the drive as follows:
Type the following command at the A:\> prompt: format drive: /v /s
Example: A:\>Format C: /V /S [Enter] drive: designates the drive you are formatting. If you are formatting the boot drive or If your system contains only one drive, type C: To format a second drive, type D:
/V tells the computer to create a volume label for the partition
after it is formatted.
Labeling can prevent someone from accidentally deleting the partition and losing your data.
/S tells the computer to copy the necessary system files to the
drive to make it bootable.
When the computer prompts you for a volume label, you can assign a name to the drive volume, of up to eleven characters or leave blank. Press [ENTER]
After the completion of Formatting, leave the Win 98 Startup disk in your Floppy drive and reboot your computer.
When you get back to the A:\> prompt type: E:
[Enter] that will cause an E:\>
prompt to appear. At the E:\> prompt type:
Setup [Enter] and the
Win 98 installation will begin.
One more special Note: Make sure that if your copy of Win 98 is an upgrade copy (not a full copy) that you have either a Win 95 CD or a
copy of Win 3.x on floppy available, because during the early part of the Win 98 installation you will be asked for proof that you do have and
older copy of Windows. When that happens, place the Win 95 CD in the CD drive or place Disk
One of the Win 3.x disks in the floppy drive then click the Next
Button. After the Win 98 installation routine is happy that you do have an older OS, remove the Win 95 CD or Floppy
then place the
Win 98 CD in the drive again and click the Next Button and the
installation will continue.
Comments appreciated: eric.groves (at) verizon.net