Basic startup question...

[Cappy]

well if you want to try and install an Operating Sytem on a drive that you have tested and is known to be bad ,good luck.
Boot into BIOS and change your boot order so that your CD-Rom drive is the 1st boot device.Use the Maxtor Utility to format your drive when it prompts you to reboot .Insert your windows 98 cd in and Reboot with CD-Rom Support.After your OS is installed you will need to boot back into your BIOS and change your boot order back to your Hard Drive .

 

[Lone Wolf]

Just one comment on the warranty... Maxtor and Western Digi no longer offer a 3-yr warranty as a standard. It is applied only to certain models (their high end). The 200 GB i bought last summer only has a 1-yr. warranty.

 

[Lone Wolf]

Well the drive reformatted fine, but now when I get to the A:\ prompt and type setup, I get a bad command or filename error. I'm assuming the CDRW drive isn't being recognized. How would I reinstall the drivers?

If the bios is not set to boot from the CD drive, you simply type D: at the DOS prompt to change drive letters where D: equals your CD drive. Then you can type "setup" w/out the quotes.

 

[JJDChE]

OK, an update...

I ran the fdisk utility, as heavywx suggested, I deleted existing partitions, created a new partition and formatted it. I ran the Maxtor HDD utility again and this time around instead of suggesting returning the HDD it said that there were some errors on the HDD and asked if I wanted to fix them, obviously I answered 'yes', and it was able to fix the errors. From there I was able to reinstall Win98 and everything seems to be working fine at the moment (key words...AT THE MOMENT).

Thanks to everyone for all the help!

(Shouldn't be long before I'm asking more questions )

 

[heavywx]

Glad to be of service.

 

[killians45]

Dont format! It sounds like a standard DOS loop. Do this. When in C:\ type in
C:\>ren autoexec.bat autoexec.123 <enter>
C:\>ren config.sys config.123 <enter>

reboot and should be fine.

you should already be in the root directory.


edit:

Oops, just realized I'm to late

 

[Apokalipse]

if you need a new Hard Drive next time, I'd say get a Seagate or Western Digital

 

[Lone Wolf]

if you need a new Hard Drive next time, I'd say get a Seagate or Western Digital

*good grief* Ya know this dead-horse debate/discussion about which hard drive brand is the best is getting old. There is no great different in any one of them. ALL hdds, i do mean ALL will fail at some point. Nowadays w/ the quality being as good as it is... that MTBF is high enough that most people will upgrade their PC or buy a new one before it gives out.

It's just a matter of how long they will work properly before developing enough errors to a point where it's unusable.