BleepingComputer.com: Hard Drive Swap

I am trying to revive a computer for a friend. Had win98 w/ME upgrade when it failed. I am trying to install and older Maxtor 40g ata drive. Have ran the maxblast disc, but cannot get system to come up to install win 98se.
Checked bios settings, it is set to boot from floppy first, scsi second and ide-1 third. Am I tring to install the wrong type hard drive? I have forgotten most of the things I knew about 98.
Thanks

Welcome to BP zg1286.

zg1286, on Jan 30 2009, 11:20 AM, said:

I have 3 Maxtor drives, 20GB, 40GB and 120GB. The 20GB no problem detecting this with my Award PGA4.60 BIOS. The 40GB was detected the first time I scanned it in the BIOS but after I installed WinXP which was useless I wanted to delete the NTFS partition and set it back to FAT32. It would only recognise 20GB of it. The 120GB drive won't even be recognised as it locks the BIOS up, the drive is to big for my system.

I've had MaxBlast3 for a couple of years. In MaxBlast3 it recognises the 20GB, 40Gb and the 120GB. When you set and format the drive in the list of operating system Win98 isn't listed but if you use WinME thats ok because its a Win9x system. MaxBlast doesn't install any operating system it only sets the drive size and type then formats. The Win98SE CD is bootable so after you have made the WinME boot disk and set the boot sequence to floppy, hard drive, SCSI then boot up with the boot disk inserted. You can check the size of C drive if you run Fdisk.exe. You can also format the drive which will check for any bad sectors with Format.com. You can also run Scandisk if you want to do a full check if you have plenty of time. Whether your system will recognise the larger hard drive will depend on its age. Mine is 10 years old and as I said it recognised the 40GB the first time but not the second time. Try and note the BIOS name and version on startup and report back here. There are patches available for different BIOS's.

Once formated go back into the BIOS and reset the boot sequence to CD Rom, Hard drive and what ever. This is because the Win98SE/WinME is a bootable CD so restart the computer with the Win98SE inserted. Or you could do this yourself if you have booted up with the WinME boot disk and at the first prompt select boot with or use the CD Rom drivers. Once booted up to the A:\ type in D: or what ever the CD Rom drive letter is and enter then type Setup to start the install.

Download a WinME boot disk from http://www.bootdisk.com/

Bios is American Megatrends 1-0429000000-0010111-07195-41E_43c5aat99-0 Date is 7/23/99
At least I hope that is right
Processor is AMD-K6™-2-450 450mhz
I have tried to re-run Maxblast, no luck does not recognize disk in A drive, saysdrive not ready, insert disk in A drive and hit any key Will not boot from bootdisk, says drive is not ready iinsert disk in A drive and hit any key. This computer was built by an employee at Ford Motor company. From what I understand, they had classes where the employee could come in, pay x-amount of dollars and walk away with a personal built computer.

OK my dumba$$ did not have the hard drive plugged in right, got that taken care of. Got maxblast to run again.
When maxblast was loading, said it could not detect floppy or cd-rom. It is booting from floppy. Maxblast runs ok
When I try to run the bootdisk, it says reading from floppy ok and the just hangs. I am getting my hammer ready
Thanks
Rick

zg1286, on Jan 31 2009, 12:10 AM, said:

MaxBlast doesn't show floppy drives only hard drives.
Ok Rick you have a similar system to me AMD-K6™-2 550Mhz

zg1286, on Jan 31 2009, 12:10 AM, said:

When MaxBlast loads up it asks where you want to run MaxBlast from just press F for floppy as its a boot disk.

Which boot disk did you load from www.bootdisk.com?

I've downloaded the Win98SE and the WinME and they both work the same. Thou the WinME has the updated Fdisk to recognise larger drives. If have my own boot disk which I've had for years which loads the CD Rom drivers and the updated Fdisk, along with the normal extra files like Sys.com and Scandisk.exe. You can download the updated Fdisk of bootdisk or Microsoft if you do a search for it.

When maxblast is loading I get two messeages
** Error No CD-Rom drive found please check power or cable
** Error Ide CD Rom driver not installed.
CD drive has power, opens and closes. Powered doen, onplugged all cables and waited 1/2 hour, plugged back in. same errors
( Going to garage for the biggest hammer)

http://fdisk.radified.com/

zg1286, on Jan 31 2009, 02:04 AM, said:

Well I don't get any of those error messages. Are you sure your using Maxblast3? Where did you download it from?

http://www.members.shaw.ca/rinocanada/hdutils.htm

http://files.aoaforums.com/I1388-maxblast3.exe.html

http://www.4shared.com/file/13372528/823d6...rified=3c6c70bf

http://www.filewatcher.com/m/maxblast3.exe.1857662.0.0.html

I can get maxblast to run. I just can't get it to boot from cd-rom to install the OS. I can get it to boot from floppy wirh ME bootdisk. It is recognizing the cd drive, but will not boot from it. When I try to fun fdisk, it says no fixed drives found.

Fixed. Got it up and running

zg1286, on Jan 31 2009, 11:48 PM, said:

Good.

If shouldn't recognise CD Rom because there is nothing you can do with them only insert CD's.