When you said "it actually worked well last night", do you mean as it's currently set up or in a different machine or configuration? If in the same machine AND configuration, then the BIOS may have lost the drive parameters (suspect failing battery). If it worked in a different machine or configuration, then the BIOS likely doesn't have it configured right in the machine it's installed in now...

0

Thanx for responding all of you. Right the CPU is a Pentium-S 100MHZ. Base Memory = 640K.I have noticed that the BIOS date and time don't keep up with the actual date and time. I have now changed the battery. I'm still getting the following message: Windows 98 has detected that drive C does not contain a valid FAT or FAT32 partition. The reason is that BIOS sometimes does and sometimes doesn't read the HDD. At first I thought this could have been contributed to the battery but with a new battery nothing has changed.Changing the boot sequence from A:C to C:A did not help either! Yes! it did work after the original installation. When was the last time you did something for the first time?

0

The message means the drive is not formatted with the proper format to work with Win98. Did the drive come from a different computer? A computer that old requires a very small harddrive. If the harddrive was previously use on that computer it must have had software installed to trick the computer into using the drive. This software is called a drive overlay. The most popular brand is by ontrack. Does that name mean anything to you? What are the uses of this computer?

0

Yes OtheHILL this driver actually came from another computer. The original HDD was only 541Mbs and this one is 812Mbs. I tried to FDISK it first but that didn't work. Tell me more about the drive overlay software. Much appreciated.Oh yes your last question. This computer is for an old Pastor in our church that only needs a very basic machine. When was the last time you did something for the first time?

0

Do you know what the brand of the harddrive is? Should be on the outside of the drive. Need that to steer you to the right place to get the overlay software.

0

It's a Quantum Trailblazer. When was the last time you did something for the first time?

0

Dawie Quantum harddrives were acquired by Maxtor whick in turn has bee acquired by Seagate drives. I may not be easy to find what overlay software will work. There may be an easier solution. Look at the jumpers on the end of the drive. There may be a jumper to limit the drive size to something below what I think you may need. The computer you are dealing with may have had a drive size limit of 504 MiB / 528 MB). If no such jumper exists then you may be able to manually configure the drive to a lower setting. See if you can enter the sollowing settings in the BIOS screens. 1024cyl.- 16 heads- 63sectors.- 504MB. After conffiguring the drive watch the startup screens to see if the drive now will show and what the capacity is seen as.

0

Problem is: with only support for a 504MB drive that's not going to give much room for any additional software without paring Win98 down to a minimal install (You might want to search for 98Lite). At the least, do a custom install and omit "anything" you don't need.

0

Thanx guys for your assistance. With HDD's so cheap these days I think I will simply discard it. When was the last time you did something for the first time?

0

Do you mean to say you intend to buy and install a larger drive into this computer? Your present computer is probably not capable of using a modern harddrive at all. If it can you will need a drive ovelay prgram. Ontrack comes to mind. There used to be free versions of Ontrack bundled with drives back when 1GB drives were teh norm. I am not sure if this is even an option for you anymore. That said, even if you do get a drive working what do you intend to use that computer for?

0

OtheHILL thanx for responding. In fact I did get another HDD. It's very small in terms of capacity but I did manage to install Win98se and Office 2000 with some spare capacity. As I said, this is for an old black Reverend that will not use it for anythging but the occasional letter or two. When was the last time you did something for the first time?

0