WIN98SE reformat and reinstall issues

[micjan]

Hi, I'm new to this board and I'm glad I 've found a way to explain my reformatting problems too.
I've WIN98SE installed on C. The whole system is getting very slow, defragmentation fails on and on, even in Safe Mode (the defragmentation program even stops with an error message in both modes!), no HD problems are found. Installing an extra 256 Mb Ram even slowed down the system!
The PC is a PII, 400 Mhz, 380 Mb Ram, partition C: 7,5 Gb (827 Mb free space), partition E (former D): 5 Gb and a new disk D: 30 Gb. Moving data to the new installed disk caused other problems: the pathnames changed by this (CD drive path 'E' became 'F', partition 'D' became 'E') and uninstall didn't work. Manualy moving to the new disk gave the following result: some programs don't start up when clicking on a document (The reverse way works), typical icons dissapeared, QT can't be installed anymore and so on and so on ...
So I decided to try to start from scratch: Reformat drive C and reinstall WIN98. How can this be done? Can someone explain me briefly which steps I have to follow?
For the moment I'm making a backup of C on HD D since I still have to figure out how I must reinstall one and another (router info, backup of mailbox, Explorer favorits and so on ...)

Thanks on beforehand for any reply,


Jan
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[Force Flow]

Welcome to PCMech, micjan!

It sounds like you may have a virus on your system. If you want to save it, try running a virus scan.

If you've finalized your decision to reformat, then here:

To reformat, start-up and press F8 until you get a boot menu. Select the "command prompt only" Then type "format c:". This will erase everything on your HDD. After this is completed, shut down, start-up, stick in the win98CD, and follow the instructions here: http://www.pcmech.com/byopc/step/26/

[Alfie]

I don't think you can format C from the command prompt only,It would have to be done via the cdrom or boot floppy,as the very things that are offered on the f8 page are on C and it will probably tell you it can't be done.
If you boot from cdrom first you should be able to activate format c: from there or via a boot floppy with fdisk and format on it.

[Cricket]

Hi micjan,

See this webpage: FDISK & FORMAT.

Cricket