after formating windows 98 and deleting all partitions my computer wont recgonize my hardrive. when in prompt i type dir under c: and it brings up my files from the memory, such as scandisk, edit, debug, etc. instead it should read c: free space 12.0 GB's. what have i done wrong?

If you really deleted your partitions (not just formated) you need to 1) Recreate one or more partitions using fdisk.exe or the utilities on the floppy that came with your hard drive. 2) Then format the partitions using format.exe so that Windows can recognize the partitions. I hope that helps

when in prompt i type dir under c: and it brings up my files from the memory, such as scandisk, edit, debug, etc. instead it should read c: free space 12.0 GB's. what have i done wrong? These files are not in Memory. They are on your boot up floppy and / or on the 'virtual' disk that is created with the Windows 98 or Me startup disk. As gmoney suggests, do an FDISK and remove all partitions, then create a primary partition and allow full size of HDD. If this doesn't work, check to see that the MOBO will recognise the 12Gb HDD! You may find that it doesn't and you will need to FDISK this HDD with a smaller Primary Partition that is compatible with the MOBO / BIOS.