I am having trouble partitioning my HDD.I recently bought a new DFI motherboard and want to set it up for Win98 SE. Everytime I create a new partition, after reboot, it disappears on me. Also, here's a strange thing. I have a Award Bios v4.51PG. It checks all the IDE's and shows what it registers. I have a Maxtor HDD. Now it's suppose to register as a Maxtor HDD, but instead it registers as a Eaptgr HDD. Here's the strange part... If I do a low level format, and then partition, the partition will stay and then I can setup Win98se. But after the installation of Win98, it will tell me to restart after I install all the necessary drivers & etc, after restart, it will fail again and the partition is MIA. Then I it will say "disk boot failure...please insert system disk". Now from then on, I have to use a boot disk to enter DOS. And same as before, I am back to square 1, with no partition and the window's directory deleted from my c:\. Oh, also I forgot to mention. The C:\ is still there, but there is no MSDOS.sys, IO.sys, and the Window's directory is gone, but there still is a C drive. FDISK reports that there are no partitions. If C drive is there, shouldn't there be a partition for it? Anyone help? Please help!

look here Upgrading Links I'm sorry I can't be more help but I don't see how you can add a partition without removing one. Or how Fdisk doesn't show the primary partition. What's the history behind the Hard drive? And can you go into the Bios to get the drive to report right? or try resetting values. TheGorx Windows Help

If you compare Maxtor to Eaptgr bitwise you will see that it's dropping bit three. M > E 4DH > 45H x > p 78H > 70H o > g 6FH > 67H Could be a memory problem.

The HDD is from a Compaq computer. I pulled it because I figured that I would save some money on building my computer. The HDD is about 2 1/2 years old and has given me some problems in the past, IE/Registry problems, windows would not boot up and had to restore everything. So it's not a perfect HDD. Fdisk, the weird thing is that everytime that I create a partition, and restart afterwards and then check to see if the partition is still there, it's gone for some reason, so I can't remove any partitions nor there are any valid partitions so that I can setup Win98. Thanks for your help.

unknown name- I've tried switching RAM with another computer in my house. The RAM that is in my system is also a pull from the compaq, so it's one stick of Compaq 128 Dimm RAM. But I took that out and replaced with Kingston Value RAM - 64MB DIMM but it still didn't work. Any other suggestions?

Also, I fogot to mention. If I reboot the machine without shutting it off, it still registers as a Eaptgr HDD. But if I completly shut it down and then wait 10 min, it will register as a Maxtor HDD. But then after another restart with the Maxtor registered will result in the Eaptgr HDD registering. THought this might help.

Everything indicates to me a heat related problem. A flaky connection will be affected by temperature. Heating causes everything to increase in size and cooling causes it to shrink. The best guess is the HD circuit board, IDE controller or the cable. I have no idea why it acts the way it does. The disappearing partition is surely very weird. However dropping the 3 bit is an obvious indication of the problem.