Trouble reinstalling 98-to-XP

[Guest]

I decided to try to reinstall XP on my system to clean out all the old junk,
but ran into some sort of problem. My system has two HD (C and D), and the
OS is an XP upgrade from an old version of 98.

I backed up everything I needed to, then restarted with the Win 98 CD and
formatted the C: drive. Then when I went to start the Win 98 install, it
wanted to format my D: drive (that still contains a lot of valuable data). I
exited out of the setup and tried again with the same results. So I
physically unplugged the D: drive from the system, updated BIOS with just the
Primary C: drive, and then the Win 98 setup says:

"Formatting Hard Disk
Please wait; Setup is formatting your hard disk.
Please insert the following disk in drive I (or your CD-ROM drive):
Windows 98 Boot Disk or CD-ROM
When you are ready to continue, press ENTER."

I have the Win 98 CD in the CD-ROM drive, and the boot floppy in the floppy
drive, and when I hit ENTER it momentarily says

"Formatting drive D
0% of drive formatted,"

And I can't do anything from that point other than reboot the machine.

I used the FDISK utility to try to remove the logical D: drive, but that
hasn't done any good either.

Why is Win 98 trying to format my D: drive at all, and even still after I've
removed it from the machine entirely? Is there some easier way to get the
setup to simply install Win 98 onto the C: drive like I had intended?

Thanks!

 

[Guest]

I should also point out that in FDISK, the D: drive continues to show up as a
fixed disk drive even though it's not in the machine or the BIOS, and also
after I've tried to delete the D: Primary Partition from the list. What's
going on there???

 

[Patrick Keenan]

I decided to try to reinstall XP on my system to clean out all the old
junk,
but ran into some sort of problem. My system has two HD (C and D), and
the
OS is an XP upgrade from an old version of 98.

I backed up everything I needed to, then restarted with the Win 98 CD and
formatted the C: drive. Then when I went to start the Win 98 install, it
wanted to format my D: drive (that still contains a lot of valuable data).
I
exited out of the setup and tried again with the same results. So I
physically unplugged the D: drive from the system, updated BIOS with just
the
Primary C: drive, and then the Win 98 setup says:

"Formatting Hard Disk
Please wait; Setup is formatting your hard disk.
Please insert the following disk in drive I (or your CD-ROM drive):
Windows 98 Boot Disk or CD-ROM
When you are ready to continue, press ENTER."

I have the Win 98 CD in the CD-ROM drive, and the boot floppy in the
floppy
drive, and when I hit ENTER it momentarily says

"Formatting drive D
0% of drive formatted,"

And I can't do anything from that point other than reboot the machine.

I used the FDISK utility to try to remove the logical D: drive, but that
hasn't done any good either.

Why is Win 98 trying to format my D: drive at all, and even still after
I've
removed it from the machine entirely? Is there some easier way to get the
setup to simply install Win 98 onto the C: drive like I had intended?

Thanks!

First, if you're trying to install an upgrade version of XP, you do *not*
need to install win98 at all. The XP install routine will ask you for the
win98 CD to prove qualification, but that's all you need it for.

Use the XP installer to format the drives. It should give you more control
over what drives are formatted and how, with one exception: it will not
offer to format drives over 40 gig or so as anything but NTFS. That's not
a bad thing, however, unless you need to directly access the disk via a DOS
or Win9x boot disk. If you would be accessing the disk via a network
connection, XP will translate the requests and the format isn't important.

HTH
-pk

 

[Guest]

excellent! that worked. thank you.

First, if you're trying to install an upgrade version of XP, you do *not*
need to install win98 at all. The XP install routine will ask you for the
win98 CD to prove qualification, but that's all you need it for.

Use the XP installer to format the drives. It should give you more control
over what drives are formatted and how, with one exception: it will not
offer to format drives over 40 gig or so as anything but NTFS. That's not
a bad thing, however, unless you need to directly access the disk via a DOS
or Win9x boot disk. If you would be accessing the disk via a network
connection, XP will translate the requests and the format isn't important.

HTH
-pk