Formatting Question

[Anna]

Because except in special OEM cases, the Win98 CDs weren't bootable. We
didn't see regularly bootable CDs until WinME.

You may have been working with only those special OEM Win98 CDs. The
retail
upgrade/full versions (and some of the ones that came with prebuilt
machines too) weren't bootable. In fact, I don't think in all these years
of supporting it (still do, sort of!) I ever came across a bootable Win98
install disk.

Hence my instructions to go about the partitioning, formatting, and then
installing in that rather convoluted way. The reason I always copied the
setup files to the hard drive in a Win98 folder was that 1) installation
ran faster that way because CD-ROMs were so slow then; and 2) because
doing
it that way meant that when you needed to update the system or add
something like a new monitor, or make other OS changes, etc. you didn't
need to go find your Windows 98 install disk. If the hard drive was
extremely tiny you wouldn't do this of course, but by the time Win98 came
around we were actually seeing huge drives of 6GB, certainly large enough
to hold the convenient extra files.

Malke
--
MS-MVP
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
Don't Panic!

Malke:
You are correct concerning the inability of many, if not most, OEM-supplied
Win98 SE installation CDs to be bootable, however, there *were* a number of
OEM-supplied Win98 SE installation CDs that were indeed bootable.

The bootable version of the Win98 SE installation CD we have used to install
that OS on many occasions is the MS retail version of that CD "For
distribution with a new PC only." The shop I was formerly associated with
maintained a stock of scores of that CD version and I still have a number of
them. We've used them time & time again to fresh install Win 98 SE along the
lines I indicated, i.e., without the need for the DOS boot floppy disk (the
"Startup Disk"). As a matter of fact within the last week or so I had
another occasion to fresh install that OS using such a CD.

Admittedly, the "upgrade" version of the Win98 installation CD was not
bootable (at least to my knowledge).

Let me make it clear that I have no problem with using a DOS bootable floppy
disk (the "Startup Disk") with the FDISK/FORMAT commands to partition &
format the HDD and then use the setup command on the Win98 installation CD
to install that OS. For various reasons we've done that many times
ourselves. But as long as a
bootable Win98 installation CD is available I see no reason not to use it to
fresh
install that OS.
Anna

 

[PD43]

Malke:
You are correct concerning the inability of many, if not most, OEM-supplied
Win98 SE installation CDs to be bootable, however, there *were* a number of
OEM-supplied Win98 SE installation CDs that were indeed bootable.

"a number" is how many?

Your initial post (quoted in part below) seemed to indicate that all
of them were, because you neglected to say that "many, if not most"
were not bootable:

"While there's nothing inherently wrong in the process Malke details
re
installing the Win98 OS on the user's 20 GB HDD, is there any reason
in this
case why the OP could not simply boot to his or her Win98 installation
CD"

 

[Bill in Co.]

"a number" is how many?

32,767

 

[Nepatsfan]

Sorry to disagree with you Colin, but I've got a Genuine Microsoft OEM Windows
98SE installation CD, hologram and all, that's bootable. It came with a 'white
box' system I inherited around 2000. The computer's long gone, but I kept the
CD. It's fully capable of installing the operating system without using a floppy
disk. It will partition and format a blank HD. It will also delete an NTFS
formatted partition.

Nepatsfan

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

I don't know if any of the late runs of Win98SE might have been bootable.
None of my retail copies were but I only bought three or four copies.

 

[Lil' Dave]

Yes, those bootable versions did exist.

Fdisk will delete any primary partition. The filesystem inherit to that
partition is not a factor. The only problem using fdisk is deleting a
logical drive using an NTFS file system in an extended partition. Whether
the logical drive is formatted is not an issue.