Hard Drive issues downgrading from 2000 to 98?

[Nottoman]

I'm trying to install Win 98 on a Presario that had Win2K on it, as Compaq
doesn't supply any drivers for Win2k and advises not to use it on this model
(3550).
I couldn't get the stinking hard drive to come up with a Win98 startup disk,
so I put it as a secondary on a Win2K machine and reformatted it FAT32. It
still won't come up with the startup disk. The disk won't go through the
full sequence.
Any issues here I should be addressing?

 

[Ken Simmons [MSFT]]

Hello,

Have you checked to see if the drive is being recognized by the system BIOS.
I would start by ensuring that the disk is configured properly in the BIOS
setup.

Regards,

Ken Simmons

Microsoft Technical Support for Platforms and Business Applications

 

[Nottoman]

Thanks Ken,
No it wasn't. The BIOS is way out of date '99 and very limited -- it won't
even give me boot up options such as A then C, etc.

Is there a Master Boot record issue here that may be a problem going from
NTFS to FAT32??