My pc will see the hard disk, cd drive and other devices, but when I try to install windows 98, the pc will go to the setup process where it says that its copying files, and eventually brings me back to the command prompt without doing anything. I did try also with a linux disk, but I ran into the same problem. I have taken everything out to where the pc is a barebones and tried from there. But still no luck. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Dear hunchy,

Is there anything on the hard drive now?

How old is the hard drive?

What speed processor do you have and ram size?

I had a similar problem when trying to load Win XP. My computer was getting too hot. I had to use a box fan next to my computer to load XP on one of my older computers.

Although, that might not be the problem. Windows will abort installation if it senses another OS or it will say its already loaded. At least thats with XP.

I would format the hard drive and start again.

Also, I would post the same question in the Windows 98 forum(if you haven't already). It sounds like a software issue to me.

Let us know,

Junkdk

The hard drive is relatively new it is a 40G Seagate drive, I have run fdisk on the drive, formatted it, and also set it to the active partition.

With a dos disk I can create directories and file on the hard drive, I can also see the cd drive, the win 98 cd can do a scan disk of the drive.

it fails when it tries to copy the files across.

the hard drive is a master, and bootable cds do start too boot from the cd drive.

originally I was having this problem with a linux disc, I was using windows 98 as a test to diagnose the problem. linux was failing to install from the cd also.

I have changed ide cables, removed pci devices to leave a barebones system with motherboard, hard drive, cpu, ram, cd drive and floppy and it still fails to install the os.

The processor speed is 2GHz Intel, 512 DDR RAM. I was using this computer for a long while but I had to remove the secondary hard drive because of bad sectors problems. The other hard drive that I am trying to use now is set as the primary drive and has been formatted as mentioned above.

any ideas would be great?

Dear hunchy,

When you say you created dos files, did you sys com too? Transfer control to hard drive?

Does the computer go straight to C prompt when you turn it on? I mean without any discs in?

These may be simple questions but important.

Let us know,

Junkdk

you say you used Fdisk what size partition did you make?

if this is Windows 98 and not SE i'm pretty sure the largest Partition it will try to install on is a 2GIG Partition.

As for it doing same thing on Linux. I haven't kept up on what Linux New and Old can install on, as i've never tried on larger than a 2 GIG partition for root.

Anoter thing to try is install from the HD it self not a CD
Copy files from the CD into a Folder you make on your HD (don't call Folder Windows)