I got a 20 GB HD for christmas and my DELL computer Bios/Cmos doesnt support drives over 8.4 GB. I need to install MS-DOS on a FAT32 partition of 8.4 GB so i can install WIN 98 S.E. Please help me, thank you. -Josh PS: Also, are MS-DOS compatibles capable of installing an O/S/?

Here's something from the annals of personal experience: Pure DOS cannot recognize a Fat32 partition as one of the standard DOS filesystems. That came later. You could install your CDROM drivers on your Windows boot diskette and make the necessary changes to the configuration files there. Reboot and run FDISK, reboot, format any new partitions then run setup from the CD. If you don't have a Win boot disk, try: http://www.bootdisk.com/

You cannot even install MS-DOS 7.0 (Windows 95) on a FAT32 Drive! You need MS-DOS 7.10 (Windows 95B or Higher) to do that. Earler versions of MS-DOS cannot recognise FAT32 OR Large Harddrives over 2 Gigabytes, Partitioned or not!

If you have a spare HD between 540 meg and 2 gig you could do it this way: Remove your new drive and put the smaller one in. Fdisk it and reformat it with dos 6.22 if necessary. Install dos 6.22 and your cd-rom driver files on it. Install win 98. Convert to fat32. Turn the computer off and install your new drive as a slave. Now you need some disk copying software. I use DiskCopy from Power Quest. Copy everything from the small drive to the big drive. Turn the computer off and remove the small drive and set the big drive to master/single. There's probably other ways but I've done this several times and it works fine.

dude -- just set your bios to boot from the cd-rom (if it can). The windows 98 oem disks are bootable and will take you right into the setup.

Before you do all that make sure you are not using the Windows ME boot disk for doing the fdisk. I say this because I also have a DELL (Demension XPST500) w/ a 13GB hard drive that originally came with W98 and when I tried to upgrade to ME the ME boot disk fdisk.exe would not allow more than an 8.5 GB partition (remember this is only a few minutes after having it partioned in Window 98SE at 13GB). So I called DELL and they had no clue. So I went to MS web site and found that it is a problem with DOS v8.0 fdisk.exe and I should just use a WIN98/WIN98SE boot disk to partition. I did and it works fine. Did I mension there are some dunm-asses at MS, but you probably already knew that.