Changing OS from NT to 98

A friend of mine has a computer he bought from Dell, with Windows NT
on it. He now wants to get rid of NT and load 98. He reformatted and
loaded 98 but when 98 attempts to start it shows an error message,
something about VFAT not accessible. I'm guessing there are some old
NT files still on the drive.

How can one erase everything on the hard drive before beginning the OS
load process? Or is there a better way to go from NT to 98? I didn't
find any web pages on this.

Thanks for any help.

NT uses the NTFS file system, and Windows 98 uses FAT32,
so you'll have to remove the NTFS partition(s).

See he

http://www.pcdocta.com/mcse/Workstat...ge2.htm#_Toc40
8626013

It tells you what you need to do to remove NTFS partitions
and FDISK to create FAT32 partitions.

Download the files for a 98 boot disk from
http://www.bootdisk.com/ and transfer them to a floppy
disk. Then boot with the disk, enter format c: /s.

After that enter fdisk and enable large drive support and
partition the drive as you want it, then format each of
the drives you created.

Turn off an boot-sector virus protection setting in the
BIOS before you install Windows 98.

You can format the drives under Windows when it's
installed by right clicking on the drive's entry in My
Computer, and clicking Format.

Eric,
http://www.pcbuyerbeware.co.uk/
http://www.sharedbirthday.co.uk/




-----Original Message-----
A friend of mine has a computer he bought from Dell, with
Windows NT
on it. He now wants to get rid of NT and load 98. He
reformatted and
loaded 98 but when 98 attempts to start it shows an error
message,
something about VFAT not accessible. I'm guessing there
are some old
NT files still on the drive.

How can one erase everything on the hard drive before
beginning the OS
load process? Or is there a better way to go from NT to
98? I didn't
find any web pages on this.

Thanks for any help.
.

Thanks for the note. After posting, I found out the hard drive is an
SCSI device. Dell told my friend he can't load 98 to this machine due
to the drive being SCSI. Is this true? He had done the FDISK stuff
to remove the partitions and create a new one, then the FORMAT, then
the 98 load.

I think he needs to get a utility program from the hard disk's
manufacturer and clean it up completely. Does this make sense? Isn't
there some 'hidden' part of the disk that FDISK and FORMAT don't
touch?

"Eric" wrote in message ...
NT uses the NTFS file system, and Windows 98 uses FAT32,
so you'll have to remove the NTFS partition(s).

See he

http://www.pcdocta.com/mcse/Workstat...ge2.htm#_Toc40
8626013

It tells you what you need to do to remove NTFS partitions
and FDISK to create FAT32 partitions.

Download the files for a 98 boot disk from
http://www.bootdisk.com/ and transfer them to a floppy
disk. Then boot with the disk, enter format c: /s.

After that enter fdisk and enable large drive support and
partition the drive as you want it, then format each of
the drives you created.

Turn off an boot-sector virus protection setting in the
BIOS before you install Windows 98.

You can format the drives under Windows when it's
installed by right clicking on the drive's entry in My
Computer, and clicking Format.

Eric,
http://www.pcbuyerbeware.co.uk/
http://www.sharedbirthday.co.uk/




-----Original Message-----
A friend of mine has a computer he bought from Dell, with
Windows NT
on it. He now wants to get rid of NT and load 98. He
reformatted and
loaded 98 but when 98 attempts to start it shows an error
message,
something about VFAT not accessible. I'm guessing there
are some old
NT files still on the drive.

How can one erase everything on the hard drive before
beginning the OS
load process? Or is there a better way to go from NT to
98? I didn't
find any web pages on this.

Thanks for any help.
.