Not enough RAM? Bad hard drive?

[derrmc]

It should be "FORMAT C: /s"

right?

in this case, you don't need the /s

 

[Toshiro]

It's my friend's dad, not mine...

I got it working. All I had to do was delete the partition I'd made and do it over... I guess there was some error or something. Never did find out why it wouldn't let me format the partition.

I used the simple "format C:" command. Honestly I dunno what the "/s" is for, and I've seen "/u" before, but dunno bout that one either.

The problem was getting the thing to format. I know the "Windows Requires blah..." error message was because I'd been trying to install to an unformatted partition (but it wouldn't let me format until I deleted the new partition and simply remade it).

Stumped as to what happened, but now it's whistling along with Win98 as happy as can be... except the laptop's LCD display is dying. Oh well, can't be helped, he's got monitors to use.

And those of you wondering "why bother?", the answer is simply customer + demand = money. If he wanted Windows 98 on there, I'd put it on there.

Oh, and Win2kpatcher, I wouldn't reformat the drive to NTFS if I was going to install Windows 98 on there :\

 

[killians45]

format c: /u is to format unconditional. Use that one, /s is system files. As far as formating in Dos, yes you can do that to install win98 and the only time you would have problems removing a NTSF table is if it was a logical drives on extended partitions. you could use a linux distro and do it that way, or get the western digital utilities CD and do a LLF. There are also programs out there that are designed to wipe partitions clean, but a LLF will do the same. Careful on LLF, if the drive is TO old, it may wind up removing important drive info. Older drives contained the info for them to run on special partitions hiddne from normal programs like fdisk, however, LLF (wrting 0's) wipes this out. Modern drives contain this info on chipsets. Don't know if yours falls in that catagory, and just the size of the drive and manufacturer wont tell me either. Would need model numbers, etc.

 

[killians45]

heh, nevermind... just reread your post and saw that you fixed it.