I have the following hardware: Gigabyte GA-6BA 440BX motherboard - NEW Intel Pentium II 333Mhz Processor - NEW 64Mb Dimm 168 pin (100Mhz)- NEW Seagate 6.4Gb STA36531A Hard Disk (Primary Master)- NEW Seagate 1GB STA31220A (Primary Slave) - EXISTING Teac CR-532E-B CD ROM (Secondary Master) - NEW Creative 3D Blaster Banshee (16Mb SGRAM) - NEW Diamond Supra V56i Pro Modem - NEW Aztec Washington 16bit soundcard - EXISTING Lexmark Winwriter 150C - EXISTING I have attempted to install both NT Workstation V4.0 and now Windows 98 on to the new hard disk (Seagate STA36531A) without success. NT installed correctly but due to the fact that Microsoft sell a half finished product it would not work with the majority of my hardware. It required Service Pack 4 but I could not install it because (you've guessed it)the OS would not recognise the CD ROM or a Network Card without the Service Pack update, so I abandoned that idea. I then wiped all operating systems from the hard disk, Windows 95 was still on the old hard disk (now configured correctly as Drive D)and NT from the new Hard Disk (Drive C) and attempted to install Windows 98 afresh. Windows 98 installed up to the point where the system was restarted to enable the hardware to be detected and set-up/configured by the new OS. The system now hangs at the Verifying DMI Pool Data point in the boot-up sequence and gives an error message "Disk I/O error - replace the disk and then press any key" What does this error message signify? I have checked that the boot up sequence is correct at A,C,SCSI in the BIOS set up I have removed various unecessary pieces of hardware; the Sound Card & the Modem, the problem still occurs. Without having to reformat the hard disks (not an option - I cannot lose the data) and start again does anyone have any idea about the root cause of my problem. Any constructive suggestions gratefully received Peter

Try doing the install without the slave hard drive attached--have had this problem before. When finished installing the OS reconfigure the drives to master/ slave config and everything should work properly.