Hi, I am trying to install win 98 on my PC. I have reformatted the hard drive, I have copied all files from boot floppy to hard drive, I have run Fdisk,created dos partition, I have selected fat32, I have set bios to cd rom first and when I type the letter of the drive at the A prompt D:\setup I get invalid system disk error. I have tested this cd on my laptop as it was just purchased and it is bootable and readable. anyone have any ideas? any help would be appreciated. Thanks , British

"I have copied all files from boot floppy to hard drive" Don't bother. Keep them on the floppy. Start the machine with that Win98 Startup disk that has CD ROM support. During the booting process it will show you the temporary drive letter assignment for your CD ROM. It is usuazlly one letter higher than usual or the letter 'R'. Either way it will show you the letter and use that letter. Note: You did not mention that you formatted the partition or set the Primary DOS partition as Active. You need to do this before running the setup program. HTH Bryan

Thanks Brian,how do I format the partition and set the Primary DOS partition as Active ? All your help is appreiciated, again thanks. British

Hi brian, I forgot to add that scan disk reported that it cannot read the last cluster on drive C. It said that logical block adressing may not be set properly {LBA]run BIOS setup utility to make sure that it is right. I do not know how to do that either. I reformatted again and created the DOS partition and made it active when I got the scan disk error. Thanks, British

Re: LBA (Large Block Addressing) CMOS setup is where you set it. When you first power up the PC it usually states on the POST screen how to enter Setup. Mine says to hit the Delete key. You want to get "IDE HDD Auto Detect" and let it discover your hard drive(s). It should assign it as LBA on that screen. When it is done hit F10 to save the changes and to Exit (If yours is the same as mine that is) otherwise read at the bottom as to how to save the changes. Before proceeding now is a good time to decide if you want more than one partition. Even if your hard drive is only 20GB it is a good idea to create at least two partitions. One for the OS and the other for your data files and/or backups. If you want more advise on this matter before proceeding then post back with what you are working with. The size of your hard drive. Perhaps you may want more than two if it is large enough. I have two hard drives with two partitions on each. It works out good this way. I can not use hard drives larger than 32GB on my aging machine. Either way; now is the time to decide. Otherwise, I hope you have all the information you need. I will follow your thread within "My Computing.net" Regards, Bryan

HI Brian , thanks again for your help and advice. I ran a scan disk on C drive and it says I have a bad block and If I want, it will repair it and move it to a part of the drive that will not be used to store data. It seems to me the drive is going seeing as it is from 1999. I will try your soulution using the auto detect in setup but I ran that already, but I will do it again. If that does not work then i guess I can assume the drive is shot? as regards to hard drive size I want to put 2- 80 gb drives in. is that possible? A frind said win 98 Se can handle it.How do you know how much storage win 98 will allow? anyway thanks for all your help . I am going through all this to keep win 98 running because of a compatibility problem with my sound card . company went out of business and nowhere to get new drivers to switch to XP. I do audio engineering with it and it would cost me thousands of dollars to change sound card and software and all the rest of upgrades needed. British

Windows 98 can handle drives up to 127GB but some older motherboards' BIOS chipsets can not.(like mine (Award 4.51PG dtd 2/23/99)) Maxtor specifically notes mine as one that can not use their overlay program to allow a size greater than 32GB. Additionally, Win98's fdisk tool can not handle drives greater than 64GB. You need to determine what your BIOS can accomodate by referring to it's maker's website. CTBIOS is a small, free and standalone program for ID'ing your BIOS. It usually provides a web address for the maker too. Windows 98 & Large Hard Drives has good info and a link for the updated version of fdisk. HTH Bryan