Hi, I have a friend who wanted to wipe the hard drive on her old computer so she could reinstall win 98se and give the computer to a relative. I think I may have screwed up. I used the format command from a DOS floppy, and now DOS cannot even see the drive. When I try to access it it says something like "drive not detected." I think I can still see the drive in the BIOS. I guess I should have used fdisk? Is there a way to get DOS to see the drive? Roberta

It's better if you can relate the actual error message and not 'something like' the message. "I used the format command from a DOS floppy" So far so good - what version of DOS? Are you using the same bootdisk when you receive the error message? Is the message coming from DOS or from the BIOS? Were there any error messages displayed during the format? Is the hard drive recognized in the BIOS? Run fdisk and choose option (4) to report on the drive status. " I guess I should have used fdisk?" Well... not so much. If the drive was previously partitioned as FAT32, likely no need to do it again - format should have been sufficent to wipe the drive & reinstall I'm not insensitive, I just don't care.

Thank you for your reply. Sorry for being so vague. It's DOS 6.22. It's on a floppy. I am using the same bootdisk when I receive the error message as I did for the format. I assume the message comes from DOS since I am at the DOS prompt when it happens. No errors were displayed during the format. I believe it sees the hard drive in the BIOS. When I go the the IDE-related menu in the BIOS setup it lists the drive. It also gives booting from the hard drive as a boot option in the BIOS. But I don't have that much experience with BIOS setup. I tried fdisk after the drive detection problem and was confused about whether it was working. Do I need to tell fdisk which drive and if so, how? Because after not being able to see the drive in DOS I tried using fdisk and selected "create a new partition". But I think I may have accidentally done an fdisk on my floppy (which I had stupidly not write-protected) instead of on the hard drive. (That happened after the other problem so it is not the cause of DOS not seeing the drive.) >> If the drive was previously partitioned >>as FAT32, likely no need to do it again - >>format should have been sufficent to wipe >>the drive & reinstall Not sure I understand the functionality of format vs fdisk, then. Does format erase the drive but still leave the partitioning done previously? I guess I thought format completely blanks the disk. Thanks again. Roberta

someone correct me if im wrong, but i didnt think dos 6.22 could access fat32 drives? i know mine cant... im surprised you even got it to format, assuming it did... also, i dont think you CAN fdisk a floppy, it only works for hard drives. try a win98se boot disk( i can give you a download link for one if you cant get hold of one yourself)and see if you can access the drive using that

btw im a dos newbie, i was 7 when windows 95 came out, so you can safely ignore everything i say and get better advice off someone else :)

Pineapple, you're doing fine Ok - right, you really shouldn't use a 622 disk on a relatively modern hard drive, as that version of DOS can't handle FAT32, and is limited to FAT16 (approx 2Gb max) partitions or drives. Start over using a bootdisk for Win98 - probably only have to reformat, although, to be sure, I've never actually done what you have. Fdisk is the DOS partitioning tool, and normally only needs to be run once to prepare a drive for formatting and eventual use. Sure, removing partitions with fdisk will remove all data along with the partition - as mentioned, formatting is usually all you'd need. You can run fdisk non destructively to view partition info & drive status - if there is only one physical hard disk there is no need to do any further selection. If you don't have a 98 bootdisk, download one of the files from bootdisk.com and run that to create the actual bootdisk. If you experience further problems, post back I'm not insensitive, I just don't care.

Thank you so much jboy and mutantpineapple. I will try the win98se boot. One last question (I hope!): I have the win98se disk and the computer's BIOS is able to see the CD drive without my installing a driver. Is it possible I could just install the win 98se OS from the CD? Or would I still need to fdisk the HD from the boot disk first? Roberta