I am trying to install win 98 on an old laptop, I ran fdisk and it works fine, but when i boot from the disc and try to format the drive its stops at 86% everytime and I can hear the hard drive make a grinding noise, then it gives me a pop up message "Setup cannot install windows 98 on your computer, an error was detected while formatting your primary hard drive partition" i've never had this happen to me before and I have no idea if it's a hardware problem or not, anyone that knows what this is or how I can fix it, could you please drop me a line so I can get this done. Thanks guys

It does sound like the hard disk is on the way out. How old is the laptop?

Well sounds like theres a bad sector on your hard disk.. now if its old you probly dont wana shell out money for a new hard drive. But i got a way you can micy mouse it. Go into fdisk and make your primary partition take %50 of hard drive and then make a secondary partition to take up the other %50 that will make your hard drive %50 c:\ and %50 d:\ now just format the c:\ and most likly the damaged area will be on the d:\ side. probly not the best way but its easy and it works :)

When boot with a W98 floppy type at the A:\>_ prompt SCANDISK C: /? press enter This will give you parameter for scanning the drive, any bad sectors will be marked as inaccessable, therefore after format W98 may install, unless the drive is totally knackered.

scandisk c: /surface Will check the drives for bad sectors and hopefully matk the bad ones as unuseable.

Thanks alot guys, i partitioned half of the drive and it worked fine. Thanks for all your help! ;)