okay, my computer has 3 hard drives -- c: and d: are seperate partitions on a 40 gig drive, ane e: is a single partiiton 60 gig drive

c: is 4 gigs with 98SE installed on it, d: is the remaining 36 gigs with XP pro installed on it. XP pro fucked up (see my previous post) so in order to remedy this, i rebooted with the XP install CD, formatted the d: partition and began the XP install process

however, halfway through the install process, it crashed. i don't know what happened... the repeating progress bar thing kept blinking, and the mouse cursor would move but the total progress bar was halted, the timer was halted, and the hard drive and the cd rom weren't accessing. so i clicked the mouse botton and bluescreen. don't remember what it said i didn't give a fuck at the time

SO i started it over. boot from CD, delete d: partition, and during the format process i left the room, to come back seeing my computer with a blank screen. so i tried it over but now when you try to boot from CD you get the same blank screen.

so....... now i can't do anything with my computer...the XP disc wont load, and when letting the comptuer boot normall (hoping that i could try and load 98) it would display the OS decision screen for a second then, blank screen.

but i was fortuante enough to select 98 and hit enter before the blank screen.... i don't know if it fixed itself or if i got it with mah quickness, but now i'm in 98 and don't really know what to do

so...


someone help me

can you format the remaining portion of the drive from within 98 in a dos prompt? It's been so long I can't remember if this is possible.

otherwise, try going to microsoft.com and downloading the XP bootdisk file. This will require several floppy disks. Of course, if you want to format as Fat32 you could just use a 98 bootdisk which you can create from within 98, although I forget the steps to do so.

Also, perhaps you should test the drive health. I think most drive manufacturers have their own utility for this. At least I know IBM does.

Your xp disk could be bad?

Your computer sounds pretty messed up right now. I would do a full format of the entire drive and install xp on it. I dont know how you planned to be able to choose to boot windows xp or windows 98 at startup ( it is possible, but not with the windows xp bootloader ). It would probaly be better to install windows xp on one hard drive and windows 98 on another, assuming you even want windows 98.

Step 1: Get/make a new XP/2K/Whatever install CD.

Step 2: Repartition (after backing up whatever you want) your 40GB drive into a 4.5-5GB OS partition and the remainder into a data partition. I use the Ranish partitioning tool, but the XP/2K installer partitioner should work too.

Step 3: Install XP/2K onto the OS partition.

Step 4: (Optional) If/when XP/2K goes belly-up on you, use Norton Ghost to back up your OS partition to your data partition and reinstall. Once you're done you can extract your data from the Ghost image.

I use these steps all the time and have found that it gives me the most flexibility/safety when it comes to reinstalling.

[quote="Anonymous"]Your xp disk could be bad?

Your computer sounds pretty messed up right now. I would do a full format of the entire drive and install xp on it. I dont know how you planned to be able to choose to boot windows xp or windows 98 at startup ( it is possible, but not with the windows xp bootloader ). It would probaly be better to install windows xp on one hard drive and windows 98 on another, assuming you even want windows 98.[/quote]

you win!

the disk was bad. finally (after several frustrating attempts) i could finally log into 98, and start the installation process, but several files could not be loaded from the XP cd... so i borrowed someone else's CD to install windows with, and (eventually) it loaded windows.

but

i DID format my d: from a windows repair session using the "format" command, instead of letting the XP cd do the formatting on it's own.


i've always been able to choose from 98 and XP. all i did was install 98se on c: and then when i went to install XP instead of chosing "upgrade" i chose "install a new copy" and put it on the d: partition. whenever you boot up there is an intermediate screen that lets you chose which windows you want to load. i really just keep 98 around for novelty reasons (every once in a while i get on a transport tycoon kick) but since this *seems* to be working correctly now i'll just leave it


right now im' 73% done downloading the latest graphics drivers from nvidia. after that i'll shut down, reattach my e: and see what i can and can't fix.




hooooray windows!