Ok I bought a used dell computer with windows 98. Also it
had a 13 gb hard drive but bios was only saying it had 2
gb. I tried to upgrade to windows xp and it seems windows
xp formated the rest of hard drive but gave it a new hard
drive letter E. So now I still have windows 98 on FAT hard
drive c: and windows xp on hard drive E:. But i only have
1 hard drive. oh hard drive E: formated NTFS. I would like
to have 1 hard drive and windows xp when done . Can
someone help me please.

The Windows XP CD is bootable and contains all the tools necessary
to partition and format your drive. Follow this procedure and allow
Windows XP to partition and format your drive:

NOTE: It would be best to physically disconnect all your peripheral hardware
devices, except the monitor, mouse and keyboard, before installing XP.

1. Open your BIOS and set your "CD Drive as the first bootable device".

===> Accessing Motherboard BIOS
===> http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/bios_manufacturer.htm

2. Insert your Windows XP CD in the CD Drive and reboot your computer.
3. You'll see a message to boot to the CD....follow the instructions.
4. The setup menu will appear and you should elect to delete the existing
Windows partitions, then create a new partition, then format the primary
partition (preferably NTFS) and proceed to install Windows XP.

5. Clean Install Windows XP
http://michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html

[Courtesy of Michael Stevens, MS-MVP]

6. ** Immediately after installing Windows XP, turn on XP's Firewall **
http://www.microsoft.com/security/protect/

7. After Windows XP is installed, visit the Windows Update website
and download the available "Critical Updates".

8. After installing the critical updates, be sure and visit the support website
of the manufacturer of the computer to download and install any
available Windows XP compatible drivers, such as video adapter
and audio drivers.

9. If you happen to run into any installation difficulties, use the following resources:

How to Troubleshoot Windows XP Problems During Installation
http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;EN-US;310064

Troubleshooting Windows XP Setup
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_setup.htm

[Courtesy of MS-MVP Kelly Theriot]

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows XP - Shell/User

Be Smart! Protect your PC!
http://www.microsoft.com/security/protect/

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"hard problem need expert" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message:
news:0d1401c3db03$2690bb30$(E-Mail Removed)...

| Ok I bought a used dell computer with windows 98. Also it
| had a 13 gb hard drive but bios was only saying it had 2
| gb. I tried to upgrade to windows xp and it seems windows
| xp formated the rest of hard drive but gave it a new hard
| drive letter E. So now I still have windows 98 on FAT hard
| drive c: and windows xp on hard drive E:. But i only have
| 1 hard drive. oh hard drive E: formated NTFS. I would like
| to have 1 hard drive and windows xp when done . Can
| someone help me please.

On Wed, 14 Jan 2004 19:14:51 -0600, "Carey Frisch [MVP]"

>The Windows XP CD is bootable and contains all the tools necessary
>to partition and format your drive.

Not *quite* correct in all cases - XP lacks a compitent FAT32
formatter. The one it has fails disgracefully on volumes > 32G, i.e.
it will trash these > 32G volumes' contents by partially formatting
as FAT32, then ages later it will fail to complete the task.

The idea seems to be to force you to use NTFS instead.

The original poster mentioned a Dell PC with Win98 and a 13G HD that
BIOS sees as 2G. As the HD is < 32G, Carey's correct in *this* case,
but for HDs over 30G, would be less so.

On "BIOS sees as 2G"; are you sure it isn't a case of FDisk that shows
a FAT16 primary partition, limited to 2G by FAT16?


The following is prolly not relevant to this old Dell, but perhaps
should be addressed in general advice on how to install etc...

Several posters complain that after XP is installed, it sees the HD
volume that is supposed to be C:, as some other higher drive letter.
As the only way to fix this involves scorching and starting over, it's
important to prevent this from happening in the first place!

The problems seem to arise when BIOS/CMOS is set to place other
devices before the boot HD in the boot process, e.g.
- Zip, LS120, USB flash drives
- presence of disks in the above drives when XP's installed
- ambiguity between SCSI and xIDE controller order
- ambiguity between Serial-ATA and xIDE controller order
- ambiguity on Serial-ATA mode (RAID, relationship to xIDE)

So, before you install, make sure your intended C: is the "first" disk
drive seen after optical and diskette drives, and that there are no
disks in Zip, LS120 etc. and no USB flash drives plugged in.



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Dreams are stack dumps of the soul
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