Trouble with getting win98 to install.

Thorbar

I've recently bought a new computer. I got it in bits from overclockers.co.uk and I've set it up. I'm fairly sure its all connected up right. Everything is showing up in bios as it should. But I can't get win98 to install. I'm afraid my HDD isn't formatted/partitioned correctly. When i try to go into win98 startup i get a error msg saying: Run-time errorR6003 - integer divide by 0. I was talking to astrofool on IRC and he told me to format my c drive and then transfer the win98 files to c and run them. When I and and format i get this error msg. Format not supported on drive c: format terminated. I've my HDD set up as a master on primary IDE on its own and bios is seeing it as that. Any ideas?

Kegser

I'm tired and about to fall asleep, but have you partitioned your drive at all?

WhiteWashMan

have you fdisked your drive?
sounds as if you havent
boot up to a dos promt using your win98 disk
type fdisk
when it asks you about large diska, hit the y button (and then possibly enter)
press 1 to create partition
press 1 to create er, logical patition.
press yes when it asks you if you want to use all your hard drive space.
erm.. just follow instructions!
when it is done, press exc and go back to dos prompt
type format c:
let it format, when you reboot, you should be able to install win98.
if not, get new hard drive or get some to have a look, um, not in that order
have fun, and welcome to computer hardware.

seamus

If command.com is having probs formatting your drive, try a low-level format. You should be able to find an option for it in your bios, it should clear any partitions or gunk in your way.

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"There is a race between mankind and the universe. Mankind is trying to build bigger, better, faster, and more foolproof machines. The universe is trying to build bigger, better, and faster fools. So far the universe is winning." - Albert Einstein

JustHalf

LOW LEVEL FORMAT BAD! DON'T DO IT!

LoGiE

WhiteWashMan has the right idea sounds like the partition table on your HD is messed up but fdisk should sort it out. I wouldn't copy win98 setup to your disk as when the OS is installed fully everytime you look at c:\ in My computer you'll be treated to the welcome to win98 screen and it can't be removed...

seamus

No no, low-level good, just make sure you have a spare HD. lol

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"There is a race between mankind and the universe. Mankind is trying to build bigger, better, faster, and more foolproof machines. The universe is trying to build bigger, better, and faster fools. So far the universe is winning." - Albert Einstein

JustHalf

That was just a quick note.

Modern IDE hard disks contain all sorts of information on them that is related to your hard-disk... which sectors are bad is only the start of it. Ask Gerry for more info (I don't remember all of it).

You delete them, you could trash your drive.

Thorbar

The bios settings were all ****ed up due to me having the IDE cable all **** ways. That's all sorted now and I'm setting up partitions on my drive.

JustHalf

That's not your bios...

Red Moose

Get a Bootdisk, and boot the system with it. A Win98 recovery disk is nice here as it will setup CDROM drivers and such.

1. When the system is booted off the floppy, search through the CDROM for the fdisk.exe program. It will allow you to initialise the Primary partition, and set a size for it. This Primary Partition is then to be made "Active", which allows it to boot. Windows needs a Primary Active partition set to Active as the C:\ drive or it won't boot. Believe me, I tried to get Win98SE to boot off a \ drive, with a separate MSDOS on C:\, and Win2k off E:\ (it boots fine).

As soon as there is a FAT or FAT32 ("Large Disk Access" in fdisk is FAT32. Use it to have one big partition of any size, otherwise with FAT (Fat16) you are restricted to < 8GB partitions. Actually maybe even restricted to <2GB partitions, I can't remember), and the FAT32 partition is assigned to C:\ (automatic if no other OS, etc., ), Windows will be able to find it on installation.

VERY IMPORTANT BIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ON NO ACCOUNT DO A LOW-LEVEL FORMAT ON AN IDE DRIVE. It is used for SCSI devices only. Low-level formats of an IDE drive will utterly balls up the INTEGRATED DRIVE ELECTRONICS ("I.D.E."!!) which are set in the factory; SCSI use separate controllers, IDE drives don't and need the information. If you low-level format you will basically loose your drive, not just temporarily, but basically for good. Useless drive, but nice paperweight.

ALSO
Copying the files from the Windows CD to a folder on the C:\ drive will NOT affect the installation in any way, other then being faster (HD speed access is way above CDROM access and transfer for unCABbing), and assigns a registry key to look for that directory whenever Windows Setup files are needed.

It in no way causes the WIndows Startup Screen to come up; that is utter bull. That application is a small .exe in the Windows folder and if you don't like it, just delete it, or else change the setting in the registry to just ignore it.

I installed Win98SE off a HD folder (the one folder on the CDROM that has aroudn 150MB of .CABs and there is a setup.exe in it as well), and never had a problem. The Startup screen comes up at first boot, and clicking the "Don't show this again" box stops it loading.

HD installs in no way affect the Windows installation in any goddamn way. It just won't, and will install faster. And keep the 150MB .CABs around in case you need them.

Gerry

erm, you shouldn't be engaging in utter bull yourself then red moose. Yes, low level formats are bad. But they eh don't mess with the drives electronics, or destroy the ide standard as you are suggesting. They just remove every bit of data from the platters, including servo information which defines the layout of the disk, eg sectors and tracks. Also, ide hard drives have fairly complicated controllers, the motherboard controllers are more concerned with timing, and interfacing the drive to the system, than low level control of the drive.

Red Moose

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Gerry:
erm, you shouldn't be engaging in utter bull yourself then red moose. Yes, low level formats are bad. But they eh don't mess with the drives electronics, or destroy the ide standard as you are suggesting. They just remove every bit of data from the platters, including servo information which defines the layout of the disk, eg sectors and tracks. Also, ide hard drives have fairly complicated controllers, the motherboard controllers are more concerned with timing, and interfacing the drive to the system, than low level control of the drive.</font>

I do indeed know this, but basically anyone can search Google for details on why not to. I just thought of making the point that IDE drives are not suited to it, as the information can not be reset due to the nature of the IDEness, as opposed to SCSIness.

I didn't know how to say that the information would be fsckered for IDE and not SCSI without just saying what IDE meant (in very very very basic terms).

dragonkin

Download Ranish partition manager (it's free) at [url="Http://www.users.intercom.com/~ranish/part/"]Http://www.users.intercom.com/~ranish/part/[/url] and read _all_ the readmes and tutorials then run it on another machine and make a bootable disk.. then insert the disk and boot up.. it should run and give you a detailed description of your HD including partitions and mbr. You can use it to create fat 32 partitions among others and split etc. But at the very least it should at least tell you if your HD is formatted or not..

hopefully this helps

Thorbar

Just one simple question. Does typing c:\format c: = a low level format?

I've got windows running at the moment and other then a bit of trouble with my drivers everything seems to be going fine.

Red Moose

No, that's not a low-level format. I would presume that's a high-level format .... same with formatting on MacOS or Linux, etc., .

You can even unformat a drive after a format c:\ command with something like Partition Magic. I accidently formatted a whole partition of 16GB once and I got it all back using it. Of course you have to not use the new empty space to get the old data back......