Setup fails on W98/Dell PII 350

[Richard Cranium]

Ran a DC project on this for 7+ months, Hard Drive failure led me to this.

A used 6g WD failed to setup the normal way.

So I downloaded the LLF utility

Same same..

Windows Setup requires 'largest executable program' to be at least 442368 bytes to run.

Setup from the bootable CD fails saying the disc has a previous o/s on it.

Did the fdisk /mbr with no joy..

MS gives little clue, since I did the LLF thingy it should run.
http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;289727

ideas ??

Thanks
Doc

[meese]

Was the drive formatted NTFS originally? If so try booting from the W2K cd and see if it see's any partitions. If it does delete it and then try loading win98.

[Richard Cranium]

Maybe NT was loaded, it came in on a trade with W98 loaded, the HD was a slave with no o/s visible.

Earlier with NT HD's I did the BC Wipe to clean up.

Does FDISK, Format C: and a LLF from the WD bunch not sort out a previous load of NT ?

[meese]

I don't know. I would think a LLF of any drive would wipe it clean for any OS. I don't think the Win98 FDSK will rid you of an NT partition though.

[pickel]

What brand of Hdd is it ??? I had a similiar problem with two drives. One Seagate 6..0 gig and a 15 gig Maxtor. Downlaoded the respective utilties and wrote Zeros to both drives, F disked and all was ok.

hmm the wd tools LLF should work on the drive even if it had a ntfs partion or NT have you checked it out with the rest of the tools run any other teasts on it? or did you just LLF and leave it at that. Also are you using the newest set of tools from wd to test/format it?

[Richard Cranium]

Pickel, it's a "WD" Western Digital I did download the zero fill utililty[LLF] low level format, and it shows the same.

Scandisk in DOS shows no bad sectors, BTW

Richie, the newest WD tools do NOT work on this 6g drive, I had to use the older ones.

I'm running the "Data Lifeguard & Overlay" software now.

Oddly, the Dell BIOS now reports the HD operating outside normal parameters ??

[Richard Cranium]

The WD overlay failed to correct the issue.
Same thing, fail to setup.

I give up on this HD, one rainy day I'll run Eraser or BC Wipe on it and see what happens.

Thanks folks

Doc

[Richard Cranium]

Well, BC Wipe failed to correct the issue.

Changed to another HD, same same, put in a New HD, same error

Changed the RAM for good measure,, no go..

Looked for the CMOS jumper, no find, did find a BIOS jumper which made no diff.

Looks as if the BIOS has a virus or the mobo has gone south..

Removed the important stuff and threw the sob on the shelf for another day..

Famous words,

I QUIT !!

As MS pointed out in the linkage in my 1st post

"The computer has a virus.
The computer has failing or faulty hardware"

I don't follow the "resolution" that they suggest, so this is more junk which is soon to be landfill bound.

thanks for the replies
Doc