Win 98 Format

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.

"aeromach" wrote in message
...

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.

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.

--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)

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.
======

On Sun, 29 May 2005 01:19:01 -0700, "aeromach"
wrote:

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.

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

"Mikhail Zhilin" wrote:

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.
======

On Sun, 29 May 2005 01:19:01 -0700, "aeromach"
wrote:

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.

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!!

"Don Phillipson" wrote:

"aeromach" wrote in message
...

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.

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.

--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)

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.
======
On Sun, 29 May 2005 07:43:02 -0700, "aeromach"
wrote:

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

"Mikhail Zhilin" wrote:

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.
...

On Sun, 29 May 2005 01:19:01 -0700, "aeromach"
wrote:

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.

Try he

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


"aeromach" wrote in message
...
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!!

"Don Phillipson" wrote:

"aeromach" wrote in message
...

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.

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.

--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)