XP Formatting error - 98SE Loads Fine - Huh?

[caesar]

Hello,
I have a desktop PC with a Win98 SE OS that works fine. I wanted to upgrade so I purchased XP Home version.
During the formatting of the HDD to NTFS the progress bar is at 100% and then I get a message that says "Setup was unable to format the partition. The disk may be damaged."
So I cancelled out the task, restarted the PC & reloaded 98SE, It formatted properly with no errors. once all the mobo software was loaded I did a scandisk. Which showed no errors or bad sectors.

Do I need a new HDD to run XP?
Thanks!

[ktkendall]

You can first load XP and leave it at fat32 till XP is up and running stable then attempt to convert to NTFS, or you can back up what files and data you may want to, and wipe the drive clean and you can use to XP upgrade disk to do a clean install of XP as long as you keep your win98 disk handy. It will ask you for it just to verify that you qualify for upgrade version of XP. That really is the best route to go..

[glc]

It could possibly be faulty ram - XP is a lot fussier than 98 on ram. It could also be incompatibilities with an old bios or some piece of hardware in the system - did you run the XP compatibility advisor?

[caesar]

It's voodoo baby...
Changed to boot-up sequence to CD-1st. I ran the Western Data Lifeguard Tool CD (which I didn't do before).
I selected the Win98 formatting option on the Lifeguard CD. But I didn't load 98 OS when the formatting was completed, I loaded XP.
XP then automatically reformated the HDD from FAT16/32 to NTSF.
XP then loaded normally(at least so far).
Loaded mobo drivers from CD's
Other than Diablo II not working (here comes another thread) other games and programs seem to be ok.
Also ran HDD chkdisk in XP, no errors, bad sectors.
Thanks!