Urgent help!!!

[jublee]

please can someone help, i just formatted my HD for a clean install but at d: when i type setup i get this message

cannot install windows on NTFS and something else cant remember, create a dos or something

Please what do i do?

Cheers

[John Prophet]

what os are you trying to install??

what file system did you format it with??

if you formatted with NTFS and are trying to put w95/98/me on it, it wont work.

give us more details please

JP

[bombledmonk]

Are you trying to install win98/ME?

You might need to get rid of the partion.

At A: prompt from a boot disk type "fdisk". no quotes...

Play around with it and see if you can delete the partitions. Then create a new one. It's reasonably straight forward. Don't have time to search at the moment but if you search for fdisk instructions

[jublee]

Sorry about that,
I'm trying to install win98, i used the boot floppy and entered:

c: format

[jublee]

I did type fdisk but it came back and said no fixed discs present

[Fr4gm4n]

Think it should look like this to format c drive from A prompt

A:\ format c:

Steve

[John Prophet]

then u need to check and see if the hard drive is plugged in etc....see if it is hooked to the ide cable

then see if the primary master is set to 'auto" in the bios


have you changed anything recently..such as added or subracted a cdrom or anything??

[dr_roberts49]

I'm just guessing from the info you've already given. You mention a D: drive as the one you got the "can't format NTFS drive". So, I assume you have either 2 physical drives or you have one physical disk partitioned into 2 volumes.

Anyway, as already mentioned, you can't install Windows 98 on a NTFS formated drive UNTIL you've deleted that partition from fdisk. Now it sounds, like you have a floppie boot disk that has fdisk and the dos system on it. Boot that disk, and at the A:\ prompt, type fdisk.

Depending on the version of dos, you should get a menu with 3 to 4 options. First, make sure you are accessing the correct fixed disk. That will be one of your menu options. Should say something like "change fixed disk". When you get to the D: drive, use the option that says "remove non-dos partition?" Say yes. The NTFS partition is now gone. Next, select "create primary dos partition". Use the entire volume of the disk. Your next prompt will be "Primary dos partition created).

At this point, you will need to reboot. Keep the floppie in your disk drive. Now when you get your A:\ prompt, type this comand to format the drive.

A:\format d:\

Hit enter, and your drive will take several minutes to format. If I was wrong about the drive letter, then just use "C" instead of "D". If it is "C" and you want the drive to boot, use this format command INSTEAD of the one I just mentioned.
A:/format c: /s

Good luck.

Robert

[paul9]

hi, jublee. if you have a windows xp cd, then boot with that, make as if you are going to install xp, get to the prompt for the filesystem you want to use and choose fat (fat32). let the xp disc format the drive for you and then quit the install. now use you 98 disc to install. when you have a drive formatted as ntfs, then win98 fdisk can have problems, as you have found.

[jublee]

Thanks to everyone that replied, very much appreciated, i used paul's method and it worked a treat, cheers paul