Hi I don't know if I ask these questions on the 98 forum or the ME forum, I was given a computer that was once Windows ME and they had no disks to go with it so I did an FDISK and FORMAT hoping I could install my original Windows98 SE. It goes through the fdisk and format fine until I try to run the setup from my Win98 SE in the CDROM I change directory to D: or E: or R: it says bad command it also gives me a message no drive found. I have no idea what they did to the computer the only when I first turned the computer on, was that they had tried to put Windos XP Professional on it so I am assuming that was where the trouble had started. I tried changing the sequence in the bios to see if the CDROM would star up first then the floppy and last C: no matter what sequence I tried I can't get the cdrom to start up the door opens and the light will come on the CDROM. I put in my Win98 SE startup disk, fdisk and format it verified the drive everything went fine then it won't run my cd to install Windows I would appreciate any help on this problem I apologize if I am in the wrong forum for these questions, thank you suzieQ

For all I know the CDROM drive could be bad. LetmeseeifIcantypelikeyoudo,no Ican't It makes my brain hurt. See if you can read the startup screen when booting with a floppy. Read the text, best you can. Reboot a couple of times if you can't find what you are looking for the first time. What you are looking for, is some confirmation that the CDROM drive is being found and the drivers loaded. Look especially for a "drive not found" message. Do you KNOW for sure that your Whinehozed 98 CD is bootable? Have you tested that on another machine? I'm done here.

When booting from a startup floppy, it will automatically set the path to the CDROM. Rather than hunt for the letter assigned to the CD, simply enter 'setup' at the A:> prompt.

http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/delete_nondos_partition.htm Read the above website if you haven't solved your problem. Did you really delete the non-dos partition while you were doing fdisk?

Google for how to install Win98. Did you go through fdisk and delete all the present partitions and creat new ones? I think the CDROM could be dead. Just because the light comes on and the door opens means nothing.

She's back :) If the fdisk and format went OK you should be able to do as Rimfire says. You can run fdisk from the prompt, choose 'large disk support', if asked and then option 4. Post back what it says if you're unsure about those steps. When booting with the bootdisk it should show the drive letter of the cdrom just before the final a:\> prompt. If that doesn't show or there's an error message instead you may have a problem with the cdrom.