Windows 98 Reformatting Problem

[camille]

Originally posted by scottwile@25 December 2003 - 12:36

What is this
and this? CMOS

Complimentary Metal Oxide Semi Conductor

[scottwile]

sorry i was try to say i don't understand this

Sounds More like you wiped it but haven't set an active partition or formatted properly.
Use the start up disk and a: fdisk
then after a restart, a: format c /s

[skelley521]

Read up on the Fdisk utility.

You need to use Fdisk to set the partition, you can have your entire hard drive be one partition or set up different partitions so the hard drive will be in 2 or 3 different sections, so to say.

If its a small HD then set your maximum partition to include your entire HD.

Now you need to format it.

a: means when you are at the A: prompt you need to type in:
format c/s

Where C is your hard drive letter.

Do a little reading on google as it doesn't get any easier to explain really.


edit: We are talking about using a boot disk to start your computer with cdrom support then you will get the A: prompt.
If you fdisk and format and all went well and your system still doesn't recognize the hard drive then it is probably 'fried' / needs to be replaced.

[scottwile]

i have already formatted my drive, when i start up my computer it says invald startup disk. i have tried the 98 and 95 windows cd and none of those work. i have make a boot disk from bootdisk.com and no luck. i can't type or do anything except the enter or anykey and it just says again invald startup disk please remove and try again. the cd rom drive flashes so it looks like its reading that but it doesn't appear to be reading the boot disk i made because the floppy drive isn't flashing it know know what to do please help. thanks

[skelley521]

Go into you setup before the computer tries to start, most of the time its F8 and set the boot devices to boot from floppy first, cdrom 2nd, HD 3rd.


edit: how did you format it?

[skelley521]

Formatting Hard Drive 3 pages step by step

[scottwile]

i tried f8 and all the other f's nothing happens it says hit del to enter setup so i do and there is an old passoword setup on there and i ahve no idea what it is.

i didn't format it a friend did who had no idea what he was doing. he went to dos prompt and just put in reformat c or whatever and went from there without making a startup disk or anything.

[scottwile]

i have tried f8 and all the other f's. nonoe work. and whent he computer started it says press del to enter setup but there is an old password and i don't remmber.

a friend formatted it not knowing what he was doing. he used dospromp and put in format c and went from there

[skelley521]

I believe that if you remove the cmos battery (open case, it looks like a watch battery) and leave it out for awhile (some puters can take up to 12hrs.&#33
It should reset everything back to the factory default settings and the password should be removed. I have dont this on several systems, some worked in 5 min. and 1 actually took 12 hrs.

[scottwile]

alright, i will try that, is it easily visable or where is it? if you show me a picture that would be great, thanks alot for the help