Please help! Formatting hd in XP??

[bobwatford123]

Here is my situation. I installed my version of XP Home Edition I received with my dell laptop on my PC......not realizing the whole thing about activation and 30 day expiry. Basically my hard drive was a mess and I figured if I was going to format it and refresh everything I might as well put XP on it also. Well, now I want to go back to windows 98 as I may as well do it now rather than in 30 days when it expires.
My hard drive is now NTFS not FAT32. I can't seem to format my hard drive in XP. Right clicking on Drive C: and then selecting format comes up with "Windows was unable to complete the format". Ive tried everything, including trying to use the 98 CD-rom to format it etc but nothing works. I've now had to reinstall XP about 4 times just so I could get anything going. Another problem, my floppy drive doesn't work so I can't use the 98 floppy boot. Can anyone help...........I've been at this for about 10 hours now..lol.

[glc]

Boot with the 98 CD and run FDISK - you have to delete the non-dos partition and create a new FAT32 partition.

[bobwatford123]

I tried many times and something always went wrong, basically making the computer inoperable (would repeatedly come up with hit any key to reboot, on black screen when starting up and that would be it). Usually it said format failed, and come up with a retry tab, which would fail again. Not sure this was fdisk, but it was the only thing it would come up with (I'm not all that computer literate....lol). I think it may have been part of the Windows 98 setup actually. I would change my bios to boot from the CDROM, wouldn't work, from the hard drive, wouldn't work. The only way I could get it going again after the 98 CD was to install XP again, set up my network connection again etc. Maybe my hard drive is fried . So there is no way for me format the hard drive directly from XP?? As I said I tried the obvious method and it just wouldn't do it.

[glc]

Nope, you cannot format the drive from within XP. Without a working floppy drive, booting with a CD is your ONLY option.

When you boot with a 98 CD, you do NOT tell it to setup 98 - you start the computer with CD support - and will wind up at an A prompt, just like if you boot with a floppy. You can run FDISK at the A prompt. 98 cannot see a NTFS partition - it sees it as a non-DOS partition and cannot format it. This is why you have to remove the partition and create a new one that will work with 98 (FAT32).

To boot with a CD, you have to set the CD drive as the first boot device in the BIOS.

[bobwatford123]

I'll try that again, but I did set up my BIOS to boot from the cdrom with windows 98 in the drive and it screwed me. Not sure what to say. I'll try again in the morning, too hammered right now......
I'll let you know how it goes glc, thanks for all the help yet again.....

[bobwatford123]

I did as you said glc, and it worked perfectly, thanks. Got Windows 98 installed again, having problems reinstalling all the audio drivers etc, but that's just the way my computer is.....