Formatting HD question..

This may sound backwards..

I've had some troble installing WinXP Pro on my machine (another thread) and I want to give it up for now and re-install Win98se. How do I go about formatting the HD so I can re-install Win98. The Win98 boot disk I have doesn't seem to work. I get the message "Format not supported on drive C. Format terminated".
I notice the Winxp boot disk is too big for a floppy. What can I do?

Thanks!

 

I assume that your XP hardrive is formatted in NTFS which cannot be recognize by Win98SE. You need to use the old DOS "fdisk" program to re-format your C drive. You need to have the "boot disk" for Win98 SE.
1 - Go to BIOS Setup and change boot order to A:
2 - Load Boot diskette and reboot the PC.
3 - Select:Start computer with(or without) CD-ROM support.
4 - at command prompt, type fdisk <enter>
5 - follow direction on screen. Remember to make your drive active.

Afteer fdisk re-partition your drive, you can pop the Win98SE CD back in and start reload Win98 SE

Good luck

 

I've tried to repartition the HD. Fdisk tells me I have to delete logical drives first but there are no logical drives set-up, only primary and extended. When I look for the logical drives, fdisk tells me there is none.

 

In fdisk:

- Select 4 (Display Partition Information) to verify disk is indeed NTFS
- Then go back and select 3 (Delete partition or logical Dos Drive)
- Select 4 (Delete Non-DOS partition)
- Next select 1 to create Dos partition.

 

How many physical hard drives do you have on your machine?

 

I only have 1 physical HD on my machine.

I figured out what was wrong.

I had to delete the non-dos partition and re-format the partition as FAT 32. Then I was able to do what I wanted.

Thanks for your time!