Hello, After formatting the hard drive on another computer. I had to dump important files on the other computer. I put the drive back into the original computer, and insert the Windows Me startup disk, dos reconizes the drive, but doesn't know what it is, it says that I need to partition the drive, or may have viruses blah blah. I run fdisk to create a dos partition, no luck, says theres no space to do it. I ran the hard disk setup utilities, that came with the hard disk, syas that I might be runineing my windows and asks for a option to restart, even though windows is not installed.......HELP.....

Adam

Complete the story...

WHY was it necessary to format the drive in the 1st place? What problem was it that you couldn't fix that made formatting seem to be a better option? And WHY was it necessary to format the HDD in another PC rather than the PC it was originally installed in?

Is the BIOS recognizing your HDD correctly? Did you change the master/slave jumper when you formatted in the other PC? If so, did you change the jumper back before reinstalling it in the original PC again?

You have to delete all current partitions, then create new ones, the format them, then reinstall WinME.

I was able to fdisk and create a partition, but now it reads the drive as a small drive and will not install windows, beciase it's saying the drive is too small. In Bios the Cd rom now keeps on getting turned off, I have to go into bios twice in a row after each boot to get it to regconize the cd rom, and the bios now reads the hard drive as a small drive too....I'm just about to give up.....

Adam, perhaps you can state exactly what the original problem was that necessitated removing the drive and formatting in the first place.

You didn't answer any of jam's questions.

Life's more painless for the brainless.

I reformated the hard drive on the other computer again, delete all non dos partitions with the Winme startup disk. Than inserted the Hard drive cd rom drivers and then restarted the comptuter with the winme starup disk and then it finally worked.

Adam....Thanks...

"Complete the story"

You could call this going from bad to worse

Format/reinstall is something of a desperate measure - - not really a 'fix' as such, more like giving up

If you are unfamiliar with the concepts involved and/or have underlying hardware issues, things will not improve (far from it)

Ah, well - - at least things appear to be looking up

I'm not one of those who think Bill Gates is the devil. I simply suspect that if Microsoft ever met up with the devil, it wouldn't need an interpreter.

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Reformatting the hard drive is the best thing to do when the copy of Windows is pretty much corrupted and/or buggy. I tried to install it over windows, and would install up to a certain percentage and then give me errors, and would close.....

I had to re-install windows ME however I chose not to format the hard drive so I wouldn't loose all the pic, programs and everything else I have on it.

It took just about an hour and the computer did 98% of the work too.

Thanks for sharing - - is there a point you're trying to make?

It's a done deal, & fwiw, the OP has left (in a huff)

Censorship is the tool of those who have the need to hide actualities from themselves and others. Their fear is only their inability to face what is real.

The point he is making, is that he was able to reinstall windows without a format. In different cases there is no need to reformat. I my case, There was no other option but to reformat. What are you trying to prove??