Format C: not working?????

[elephantsfly]

Here's a challange for you guys! I am trying to format the Hard Disk and start over. System currently has Windows for Workgroups, trying to install Win98.

I created a Win 98 boot disk and booted to it. Chose No CDROM support.

At the A: Prompt I went into FDISK and enabled large disk support (Hard Disk is 503.96M), Chose #3 to delete all partitions, left volume name empty and hit enter...

Message I got was: volume name did not match????

Then I went on to choose #1 and create a primary dos partition, got the message that the primary dos partition was already there.

I then exited and rebooted to the Win 98 disk again. Chose to boot with CDROM support.

At the A: Prompt I typed...format c:

It proceed to format the drive at 99% completed I get this message: Trying to recover alocation unit 64, 248...then after a few minutes...not ready, format terminated.

Then I tried to format E: and I got the message: cannot format a network drive.

Then I changed to d: and typed...setup. I got the message: CDR101 not ready reading Drive E.

Then I rebooted the system and guess what, Windows for Workgroups is still there?????

What can I do to put Windows 98 on this hard disk??? Should I just trash it??? Buy a new Hard Drive???? Is this drive bad???

[edge345]

Boot with win88 startup diskette,choose no cd-rom support, At the a: prompt type fdisk, then choose 4 to view all partition information and check the volume name, press Esc then choose 3 when asked for the volume name type the name you seen when you pressed 4 to view all partition information, after it deletes the partition choose 1 to create partition and make the drive active. when done reboot the computer with the win98 diskette in the a:
drive then choose to boot with cd-rom support and then at the a: prompt type format c: then press enter.

If you still get 99% and not ready, format terminated then you have serious errors on the hard drive, you then should go to the drive maker and get the utilitiy tool to format the drive with a low level format with zero's....

[Confused]

Does 503M qualify for large disk support? Also 503M is kinda small for WIN98.
Chas