win98 problems
This is a discussion about win98 problems in the Windows Software category; my father in a moment of stupidity decided to reinstall win2k, without knowing what he was doing, and thus converted the c drive to ntfs! from then on win98 obviously would not work. . . anyhow i then tried to install win98 again by booting into dos with a boot disk but errors started occurring since i could not ge ...
my father in a moment of stupidity decided to reinstall win2k, without knowing what he was doing, and thus converted the c drive to ntfs! from then on win98 obviously would not work...
anyhow i then tried to install win98 again by booting into dos with a boot disk but errors started occurring since i could not get onto the c drive and after rebooting again i was just left with a flashing _ in the top left of the screen.
so after this i eventually worked out to run fdisk and select the c drive as the primary partition. things worked and i can now load up win2k again!
however i am left with an f drive of 0 size in my computer - how can i remove this?
secondly since i have win98 installed on a ntfs file system it obviously does not work, so could someone tell me how i can safely delete it? (i presume editing the boot.ini file and deleting the windows dir would do the trick- remember i cant load win98)
finally is there a way without converting my c drive to fat32 of installing win98 onto another partition?
thanks for the help,
CyRUS64
anyhow i then tried to install win98 again by booting into dos with a boot disk but errors started occurring since i could not get onto the c drive and after rebooting again i was just left with a flashing _ in the top left of the screen.
so after this i eventually worked out to run fdisk and select the c drive as the primary partition. things worked and i can now load up win2k again!
however i am left with an f drive of 0 size in my computer - how can i remove this?
secondly since i have win98 installed on a ntfs file system it obviously does not work, so could someone tell me how i can safely delete it? (i presume editing the boot.ini file and deleting the windows dir would do the trick- remember i cant load win98)
finally is there a way without converting my c drive to fat32 of installing win98 onto another partition?
thanks for the help,
CyRUS64
Participate in our website and join the conversation
This subject has been archived. New comments and votes cannot be submitted.
Jun 7
Jun 12
0
6 minutes
Responses to this topic
Use a Win98 boot disk to boot from. Use the fdisk command to delete the NTFS partition. It will be listed as a non/dos partition. Create a new partition. It will default to Fat32. Format the drive. There ya go!
OP
cheers for the help but i think i miss explained the situation:
basically i have a c: ntfs with my whole hard drive on - this has both win2k and win98 installed on it! how can i safely delete win98 without formatting the disk (i have ****loads of information that i can't backup ~12gb!) - can i just edit the boot.ini and delete c:\windows?
secondly how can i delete the zero size drive which somehow was created - if i double click on it in win2k it says "F:\ is not accessible. The parameter is incorrect"
if i right click on it Type is local disk and file system is unknown, used + free space +capacity is zero!
btw the first half is what i really need help with!
thx in advance
CyRUS64
basically i have a c: ntfs with my whole hard drive on - this has both win2k and win98 installed on it! how can i safely delete win98 without formatting the disk (i have ****loads of information that i can't backup ~12gb!) - can i just edit the boot.ini and delete c:\windows?
secondly how can i delete the zero size drive which somehow was created - if i double click on it in win2k it says "F:\ is not accessible. The parameter is incorrect"
if i right click on it Type is local disk and file system is unknown, used + free space +capacity is zero!
btw the first half is what i really need help with!
thx in advance
CyRUS64
"delete win98 without formatting the disk (i have ****loads of information that i can't backup ~12gb!"
Then you definetly DO NOT want to mess around with the partition. (By that I mean converting it to another type). Back it up.
"can i just edit the boot.ini and delete c:\windows?"
Yes. As long as your NT directory is WINNT and your 9x directory is WINDOWS, then yes you can.
"secondly how can i delete the zero size drive which somehow was created - if i double click on it in win2k it says "F:\ is not accessible. The parameter is incorrect"
if i right click on it Type is local disk and file system is unknown, used + free space +capacity is zero!"
Go into Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Computer Management/Disk Management. It's pretty obvious what to do from there.
Then you definetly DO NOT want to mess around with the partition. (By that I mean converting it to another type). Back it up.
"can i just edit the boot.ini and delete c:\windows?"
Yes. As long as your NT directory is WINNT and your 9x directory is WINDOWS, then yes you can.
"secondly how can i delete the zero size drive which somehow was created - if i double click on it in win2k it says "F:\ is not accessible. The parameter is incorrect"
if i right click on it Type is local disk and file system is unknown, used + free space +capacity is zero!"
Go into Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Computer Management/Disk Management. It's pretty obvious what to do from there.
OP
thanks a lot for the help guys, but dosfreak i have a couple more questions:
1)what files are for win98 only that are in the c:\ directory (id like to do a bit of spring-cleaning!)
2)the problem is is that i had tried disk management anyway but when i run that the f: drive does not exist! as i say it is of 0 size and cannot be opened in win2k.
it does however appear in "my computer" and is used when i put a win98 boot disk into the drive on booting up.
any more ideas-
thx anyway,
CyRUS64
1)what files are for win98 only that are in the c:\ directory (id like to do a bit of spring-cleaning!)
2)the problem is is that i had tried disk management anyway but when i run that the f: drive does not exist! as i say it is of 0 size and cannot be opened in win2k.
it does however appear in "my computer" and is used when i put a win98 boot disk into the drive on booting up.
any more ideas-
thx anyway,
CyRUS64
Win9x files:
(root folder)
io.sys
msdos.sys
bootsec.dos
autoexec.bat
config.sys
system.1st
bootlog.txt
Your 0 byte partition:
Try to get a linux distribution, such as Mandrake 7.0 (yes, this really works, guys), and boot from there. Use Linux's fdisk (/bin/fdisk) to see you partition table. Then delete it with 'd' command.
Linux fdisk is better than win2000 disk manager, since it doesn't complain so much about "being or not accessible" your drive.
(root folder)
io.sys
msdos.sys
bootsec.dos
autoexec.bat
config.sys
system.1st
bootlog.txt
Your 0 byte partition:
Try to get a linux distribution, such as Mandrake 7.0 (yes, this really works, guys), and boot from there. Use Linux's fdisk (/bin/fdisk) to see you partition table. Then delete it with 'd' command.
Linux fdisk is better than win2000 disk manager, since it doesn't complain so much about "being or not accessible" your drive.
I know I'm just quickly posting this, and I don't understand everything...but here's my experience...maybe it applies here as well?
I had a harddrive partitioned into 4 drives, 2 NTFS(C,D), 2 FAT32(E,F).
When I used my Win98 Boot Disk, it rewrote E and F drives as my C and D, since it only recognized my FAT32 drives, thus ****ing up my partition tables. It was unrecoverable, even with Partition Magic.
SO the next day I went out and bought a new harddrive, just because I needed a harddrive, since my computer was needed for college.
With my harddrive(by Maxtor), came a disk utility bootdisk. Using this, I was able to blow the entire ****ed up harddrive, and redo everything. Fdisk and Format in a GUI. Very sweet program.
If you want to completely blow your harddrive and start out fresh, email me(inferno2000@ve3d.net) and I'll send you a zipped copy of the disk.
And if this isn't what's needed, then I'll make this post useful. Hi Mom!
------------------
PIII 500 (Pre CuMine)
160MB RAM
GeForce DDR
Sonic Impact S90
Win2K Prof(and W98SE, but unused for 2 months)
Logitech Itouch Elite
Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer
Everglide (HL Giganta)
Logitech Quickcam Home
etc. etc. etc.
I had a harddrive partitioned into 4 drives, 2 NTFS(C,D), 2 FAT32(E,F).
When I used my Win98 Boot Disk, it rewrote E and F drives as my C and D, since it only recognized my FAT32 drives, thus ****ing up my partition tables. It was unrecoverable, even with Partition Magic.
SO the next day I went out and bought a new harddrive, just because I needed a harddrive, since my computer was needed for college.
With my harddrive(by Maxtor), came a disk utility bootdisk. Using this, I was able to blow the entire ****ed up harddrive, and redo everything. Fdisk and Format in a GUI. Very sweet program.
If you want to completely blow your harddrive and start out fresh, email me(inferno2000@ve3d.net) and I'll send you a zipped copy of the disk.
And if this isn't what's needed, then I'll make this post useful. Hi Mom!
------------------
PIII 500 (Pre CuMine)
160MB RAM
GeForce DDR
Sonic Impact S90
Win2K Prof(and W98SE, but unused for 2 months)
Logitech Itouch Elite
Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer
Everglide (HL Giganta)
Logitech Quickcam Home
etc. etc. etc.
OP
its weird cuz under computer management in win2k, under disk management i get just the c drive, but under the logical drives menu i get the zero size f partition as well. is there any simpler method of removing it? will partition magic do the trick, cuz i cant be bother to install linux!
anyway thanks for the help guys,
CyRUS64
anyway thanks for the help guys,
CyRUS64
