Fdisk

I have been advised in this forum to always use FDISK before formatting as it is safer to know which version of FDISK has been used. The explanation being that FDISK puts the FAT onto the disc and if the previous OS was win 95a (which it was) then this would be a FAT 16 which is not compatible with the FAT 32 required by more up-to-date systems like win98 SE (which I intend to put onto the win 95a machine)
My question is this - How do I locate the FDISK program which is on my computer?(my computer's OS is win98 first or original version). Once located, could you tell me how to transfer FDISK to a win98 bootup floppy that I intend to use to bootup a relatives PC that is currently running win95a. My intention, is to partition this machine using FDISK and then format it and install win98 SE. I would also appreciate some advice on how to use FDISK - my only previous attempt to use FDISK didn't get very far, a message just kept popping up saying "the disc is already partioned" it didn't seem to give me the option of deleting the current partition and putting a new one on, which is what I will want to do for reasons outlined above.
Thanks for any help
David

 

All you need to do is create a W98 boot diskette on a functioning W98 PC. Start>Settings>CP>Add/RemovePrograms>Startup Disk>Create Disk. Fdisk will be on the disk when your done. I'd also suggest "Write Protecting" the W98 Boot diskette when your done creating it and before you use it on the W95 PC.

Then do this on the W95 PC ....

Insert the W98 bootdisk and power on the machine. It should boot up to a boot menu. If not, you’ll need to change the boot sequence in your BIOS to A,C,D

After it has booted to the bootmenu with 3 options, select the option to "Start with CDRom Support".

Somewhere on the screen at the very end, it tells you what drive letter it has temporarily assigned to the CDRom drive. It will look something like this, "Drive X =MSCD001", where "X" is the drive letter that's been temporarily assigned to your CDRom drive for the install. Make a note of what drive letter it displays. If you don't see that phrase on the screen then you didn't get CD Rom support. Stop and do not go any further since you won't be able to install Windows from CD without CDRom support.

Assuming you did get CDRom support, then at this point, once you've fdisked and formatted the drive, there's no going back. All of the data and programs will be erased from the drive. At an a: prompt key in the following,

fdisk

Leave the default set to "Y" for large disk support and press enter.

Now use the option to "Delete Partitions". Delete any and all you see listed. Now take the option to "Create a Partition" and create a "Primary DOS" partition. Take all of the defaults during the Primary DOS partition creation.

Now after the PC has restarted, key in the following and press enter.

format c: /s

When it's done insert your Windows CD. Then key in the following command at the prompt and be sure to change the drive letter, "X", to the drive letter that was temporarily assigned to your CDRom drive that you should have made note of earlier.

X:\setup

Good luck and be sure to let us know how it went.

 

Thankyou for that reply. I will tackle this job in one weeks time when I am due to visit my in-laws. I would just like to ask one more question. Last week I left my in-laws PC in a mess. I tried unsuccessfully to install win95 over win95 and the upshot is windows refuses to load and the 95 bootup disc didn't give the "start with CD support option". I hope a win98SE will boot it up and offer this option but what shall I do if it doesn't. I have read up on the problem and it seems that I need to copy the CD-ROM driver to the bootup floopy and change the autoexec.bat and config.sys on the bootup floppy so that these files reference the driver. If you could give any detail on the actual procedure required to achieve this i would be very grateful. In particular, how do I track down the CD -ROM driver's name - especially difficult as I'm effectively locked out of windows and I've no idea what type of hardware is inside my in-laws machine!
Thanks
David
BTW-Going out now but back on-line tomorrow

 

Try not to go that route. That was what was
necessary for win95. win98 had much better
cd-rom support, so if at all possible use a
98 start up disk.
Basically what you had to do was include the
dos driver for the cd-rom on the 95 startup disk,
along with windows file mscdex.exe. Then you
had to change autoexec.bat to reflect that these
files were on the floppy instead of the hard drive.
Really use a win98 startup disk as this will probably
boot with cd-rom support. Save a lot of hassle.