instaling win98se fails -relating to hardware?

hi all and ty for responds as i knowit will be a lot of helpful ones.
here we go.
have old pc not that bad celeron 677 with ion gigabyte motherboard with 32 mag sdram.seagate v 20gb with integrated video and sound on motherboard.
it used to be nt4 station on it-got it from work.
as i didnt like nt4tation i tried to install win98se.tried to boot from cd.every time boot fails.realized that nt uses ntfs files and win 98 fat32 ones.
some of you will recognize this topic as it ihas been posted by me and i still didnt manage to install win98se.
i got boot disk as u sugessted then fdisk, created partition and rebooted and formated disk and everything is find so far.
i can see partition when i do fdisk again i can see that there are fat32 files 100%.
When i go to drive and type dir get all files and then i type setup and it goes and starts to do the scandisk first and thats bout it nothing happens after then.
tried to change cmos to boot from cdroom-always fails.questions??
is the hard disk staffted?
i dont think is insuficent memory as i instaled win98 on much older machines then this one and they were able to but from cdrom.
interesting when booting it recognizes cdrom sony32 which i set up as primary slave and hard disk as primary master.
was reading hips and as you see done and tried few thing but scratching my head now.when boot from boot disk it loads everything there and ask me to install with cd or without cd which i both tried but nothing yet.
tried fdisk /mdb not sure about abreviation now but i used proper one still nothing.
Is it because hard disk is 2 big?
i tried to not to make partition and format all 20gb-same
partition 5gb-same?
any sugestion?
can remove hard disk and install on the other machine if necesery-didnt tried yet
thnks

Couple of thoughts here...

1) Make sure that the BIOS is set to check for a bootable CD before it checks the HDs. Otherwise once it finds a bootable HD it stops looking and the CD never gets looked at.

2) I think Win9x had problems recognizing HDs bigger than ~8GB. This is because of a BIOS limitation. In many cases even when the BIOS recognized larger disks the OS wouldn't. Try creating a partition smaller than 8 GB and see if windows will install to that.

Considering your CD won't boot at all right now though, I would first check the boot order in the BIOS. Make sure the CD is first.

Hi,

1. NT 4 will only recognise a primary partition of 2Gb (I think....there is a limit anyways, and it is quite small)

2. You cannot load Win98 onto an NT4 machine unless you load Win98 FIRST. Or you use some fancy software like Disk Commander, that hides the OSes from eachother.

3. You cannot load 2 OEM Windows versions on the same machine. Well you CAN, but it would be illegal in your circumstances so I am not going to post how, here :)

I would suggest that you f-disk and create a single partition (FAT32), load Win98se, defrag, then create another partition afterwards, if you want it.

I don't recall any hardware issues with 98 Second Edition, I have certainly seen them with First Edition!

Remember that most of the drivers are in the folder"WIN98" and not in the one called "Drivers" ;)

EDIT: Just had a thought...... Go to the Seagate site and download their installation and disk analysis tools. This will tell you if there is anything wrong with the HDD, and will get over any limitation in the BIOS. There should not be a BIOS problem if this is the original drive, but I have encountered problems where reformatting "lost" the EZdrive or whatever large disk management software. It might actually have had one of those in the first place?

Boot from the Seagate disk and set the drive up using their installation tool. Then try to load Win98Se.

Good Luck

If your motherboard does not have a bios issue with the 20 GB hard drive - Windows 98se won't. When you go into the BIOS/CMOS Setup - set the Master drive detection to Auto. then "detect" your drives. I've loaded 98se on quite a few systems which had 20 GB hard drives or larger and have never had a problem. Personally, I prefer using 2 partitions . . . seperating system files from downloads, pics, personal documents, etc.

As far as booting from the CD, is your 98se copy a bootable CD. Not all of them are. Also, if the CDRom cannot run from a generic/OEM driver (those included in Ebd), not only will you be unable to boot from that particular CDRom . . . you will also be unable to load from it. I ran into this problem with a Creative CDRom and again with a Phillips CDRW.

Does the install begin ScanDisk and stall or is it that it is just taking too long to complete? I realize nihil suggested going to the Seagate site and downloading Disk Manager to help with the install, but sometimes that same management software can create problems elsewhere and does not uninstall correctly using fdisk and format. I believe most Seagate drives come preloaded with EZ Drive or another of their managers. To ensure you have a clean AND complete uninstall use the Debug Utility from your 98se floppy (instructions from Award "Bios Secrets Guide":

Debug Utility - Deletes all data on the master boot record of the drive
Note: This deletes everything on the hard drive.

1. Boot the system from a DOS floppy disk. This must be a bootable DOS 5.0 or above disk. The floppy must have these DOS files: FDISK.EXE, FORMAT.COM, DEBUG.EXE and SYS.COM.
2. Type debug and enter these lines at the prompt:
F 200 L200 0
a 100 [Note: at this point the prompt will change]
mov ax,301
mov bx,200
mov cx,1
mov dx,0080 [Note: use 0081 for second fixed disk.]
int 13
int 3
[Press Enter to leave a blank space here.]
G=100
q
Then press the Enter key. The drive should now have no partitions on it. Use Fdisk to set up the drive and then format it according to your operating systems’ manual.
To partition the drive:
3. At the A: prompt, type fdisk. (Note: For Drives larger than 8.4Gig you will need WIN 98 or higher)
4. Select option 5 to choose a drive in a two or more drive system.
5. Type the number of the drive you want to partition.
Warning! FDISK will automatically partition the first physical drive, unless specified otherwise, from within menu choice 5. If you have a working first drive, then you will not want to re-partition it.
6. You are now back at the main menu. Select option 1 to create a primary DOS partition or logical drive.
7. Select 1 again to create a primary DOS partition.
8. Press Enter to choose the available size. Reboot when instructed.
To format the drive:
1. Boot the system from a DOS floppy disk. This must be a bootable DOS 5.0 or above disk (the WIN 9x startup disk is OK). The floppy must have these DOS files: FDISK.EXE, FORMAT.COM,
DEBUG.EXE and SYS.COM.
2. At the prompt, type FORMAT c: /u /s. Press Enter to confirm that this is what you want to do.
Note: If this is the second drive you are formatting, replace the drive letter C above for the letter of the drive that you are formatting.
3. When the disk is formatted, the A: prompt reappears.

For your info: fdisk /mbr, reinstalls the first 446 of 512 bytes of information in your Master Boot Record for C: drive with zeroes thereby rewriting the executable code and data strings that may currently reside there. The remainder of the 512 bytes are the boot settings which tell your computer how to boot.

If you still have problems loading 98se (after trying Seagates Disk Manager or deleting it), I would switch out the drive and see if the same thing happens with a known "good" hard drive.

I meant to ask earlier . . . does your motherboard have a Clear CMOS/Bios jumper or firmware write protect setting?

I hope this has been of some help and that you are finally able to load 98se. Good Luck!!

V.

There are some good points made above. It does sound like your cd drive is not finding your win98se disk, i have run into this a couple of times with older cd drives. It may be that you are using a copy of win98 that has been copied on a cd rw some of the older drives don't read them. A tip for future reference, if you make backup copies of software that you own use cd r's not cd rw. There is a few ways that you can install 98 but i'll run through the way i do it for you as i'm not sure where you are getting the problem.

1.boot to a win 95/98 emergency boot disk.
2. Type fdisk then using the options delete all partitions
3. Using fdisk create what paritions you need. 1 of them must be a primary dos partition and make it active.
4. Reboot when asked
5. Type Format c: /s and let the drive be formatted.
6. After formatting has finished put your cd in the drive and reboot making sure you boot with cd rom support.
7. Watch your screen to see which drive letter the drivers for the cd drive are loaded for.
8. If d is the cd drive Type D:\setup. The setup should then run scandisk when that has finished you will need to exit scandisk for setup to continue.