Win 98 wont boot, cant even do format C: from dos

S

Southy

New Member
Hey all,
I have a problem with a friends computer, its older and has win 98 installed.
Somehow they really messed it up and when it trys to boot windows,
it automatically tries to run the Microsoft Scandisk... it gets to about 9% and then an error box appears and says:

ScanDisk encountered a data error while reading the FAT on drive C.
This error prevents ScanDisk from fixing this drive.
[ OK ]


I thought, okay, no problem, I'm just gonna reformat the drive, so I used a boot disk and got into DOS prompt,
typed in: Format C: and it said, "all data will be lost, do you want to proceed?"
I selected 'Y' and it continued on, it gets to 61% and then stops... this is what it says:

Checking existing disk format.
Recording current bad clusters
61 percent completed.
Insufficient memory.

Then it returns to: C:\>

So I cant format the drive and I cant boot windows, does this mean that the hard drive itself
is garbage or is there some other method I can use to try and reformat the drive?
 
The first step of booting from a 98 startup floppy was correct. The second step of using the format C command was premature in order to wipe the drive. When at the dos prompt you would first type in "FDISK" to bring the menu of options where you would then choose to delete the current primary partition assumming there is only one.

With the original partition wiped you then choose the create new primary option. Note if the drive is larger then 64gb you need the last update for fdisk. The next step after creation of the new partition according to either the full capacity single primary or custom sizing there to later add a secondary is the use of the "Format C: /s" command. The "/s" switch instructs the basic dos system files like command.com to be copied to the root of the hard drive. For full detailed instruction, http://www.dewassoc.com/support/index.html

For the "263044usa8.exe" update used on larger capacity drives go to the Microsoft support site at http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=263044 Note that the extended support for both 98 and ME was closed at the beginning of july 2006. Look just below the green line at the first link for the last update still available for formatting and preparation for a 98 installation.
 
I had to get that when first putting 98SE on a 120gb drive some time back. Since then I've dual booted Linux with 98 on that later when putting in a 250gb for the primary. Now I ended with two of those with the older possibly in mind for a Vista/Linux dual boot there. Save that update however. Burn it to cd with some other good files for later reference. Eventually that seen there will probably be removed by MS.
 
PC eye said:
I had to get that when first putting 98SE on a 120gb drive some time back. Since then I've dual booted Linux with 98 on that later when putting in a 250gb for the primary. Now I ended with two of those with the older possibly in mind for a Vista/Linux dual boot there. Save that update however. Burn it to cd with some other good files for later reference. Eventually that seen there will probably be removed by MS.
Click to expand...


Just a reccomendation for you:
I would tripple boot XP, Vista and Linux. Vista has some pretty bad compatibility issues with normal software. Most software doesn't nativly support it and the Program Compatibility Wizard seems to be missing...
You just have to right click on the file, but...
 
I started with three partitions initially with dos 6.22 on the first to see WIN 3.1 run there. WIN95 was soon to go there. 98 Went on the second. With Linux however you have to create 3 or 4 partitions where that was seen on the remaining 60gb of the drive.

XP was the last to go on after wiping the original two primaries. I simply found a way to run old dos programs on an XP machine and put XP there to replace the older versions. The installer makes life easy to delete and create new partitions. But hang onto that version of fdisk for 98 use on large drives. Sometimes you can get to delete XP partitions. But that only works on installations where Service Pack1 came with the installation cd. SP2 releases won't allow it for some reason.
 
timothyb89 said:
Just a reccomendation for you:
I would tripple boot XP, Vista and Linux. Vista has some pretty bad compatibility issues with normal software. Most software doesn't nativly support it and the Program Compatibility Wizard seems to be missing...
You just have to right click on the file, but...
Click to expand...

I won't be touching the beta version of Vista. No way after getting burned when trying out the IE 7 beta 2 here. Between hardware failure on the old case and having to wipe the drive to get Windows running again there I finally got rid of that. Vista like XP is "supposed to be"(hhmmm??) backward compatible:P from what they tell you. I am concerned that it could be another MS flop like ME was.(hhmmm??)
 
I'm using Vista right now.
It's got a future, but MS is going to have to decide if it will be what saves them.
A lot of Linux users seem to be predicting that Vista will be a flop, and that a lot of people are going to switch to Linux because of it.
Only time will tell...
 
The goof up seen by several with just the beta versions of IE could see a push by a good number to run FireFox as their only browser. Currently I run both anyway. I even custom made a Google search bar for it. But I still use IE with another for combined search engines.

The main problem with Linux is the UNIX structure which is far outdated. While some of the newer distros have made things easier it still lacks the type of user friendly gui seen on Windows and Mac. This is what hampers ut from seeing more users. It appears that XP will remain the primary here until something better comes around. Besides I still have an interest in the Penguin OS.
 
What about KDE? I can say it's more powerful than the Explorer any day. If I could, I'd use the ReactOS explorer in Windows. And anyway, I like the directory structure. It's all based on logic and you can tell where everything is because of it.
 
The one thing I favor in Windows over Linux was the ease at opening up two windows for copy and transfer of files while set at a higher screen resolution. I haven't too many distros to see if any support higher then the 800x600 rough estimate screen size. It certainly doesn't have "copy *.* to" there.
 
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