Had problems with system freezing, decided I didn't like Windows Me, so I formatted the hard drive and installed Windows 98SE. Windows 98 setup went fine until it asked for a system restart. Upon restart, "Operating System not found" was the error message. Now if I reboot with a Windows 98 boot disk, the system attempts to start, setting C: as the Ramdrive, but indicates Windows 98 has detected that drive C does not contacin a valid FAT or FAT32 partition. Apparently the hard drive is being read, however I am unable to run fdisk or any other utility on the hard drive. If I attempt to restart using the Me Recovery disk, the recovery is aborted because the hard disk is not initialized, and says to run Fdisk. If only it would let me!! I know......I messed this up pretty good, but I sure would appreciate any help anyone could offer. Thanks in advance.

use a hard drive diagnostic program such as powermax for maxtor, it has the capability to write zeroes to the entire drive, then run fdisk, then format. but get the one from the support site of the manufacturers download site, for your drive.

well it does sound like a mess... first try checking the cmos setting when you first startup the computer. Make sure it detect the hdd there. If it's showing it's there, try change the setting to none. Save the setting and exit. Try off the computer completely and go back in the cmos setting and try redect your harddrive.

AznMind, I went into CMOS and the hard drive is recognised there. As you suggested I changed the setting to none, rebooted, and was able to detect the hard drive. What next?? Thanks, Snell

hello try rebooting with the bootdisk in drive. at the a:sys c: click enter if this dont work i sujest you do as www says