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I simply can't leave well enough alone.

Yesterday, I was installing Win98 on a new machine using an OEM disk I had from an old computer. The install was "successful", except that I started to get some glitches when I updated graphic and audio drivers. Being the anal-retentive that I am, I decided to start from scratch with a new clean install.

Oops. After wiping out my C drive, I booted off of the same floppy that I installed from the first time and, just after setup started, I got error message SU0168, informing me that an OS was already installed on my machine and that I needed to purchase the Win98 Upgrade version.

I an using a new WD 80GB drive. I tried repartitioning. I tried fdisking. I tried reformatting. Each time I got the same error message. Anybody got any ideas? I really don't want to migrate over to XP yet.

I have installed off of this CD several times before and never had a problem.

While I have your attention, any thoughts on partitioning strategies for a drive this size? I was thinking of multiple partitions- say 8GB for an OS section, and them equal sized partitions for my wife and kids, maybe with a separate partition for downloading. Too many?

Thanks for all of your help.

In poking around, I realize that I'm swimming in murky waters here with regard to my software license.

The original machine that I received the OS disk from is long since dead and the parts have been canibalized. This new install will be the only machine anywhere running off of this CD. This is not an instance of using one license to run multiple machines.

I apologize in advance if anyone takes offense at this or views it as a violation. That is not my intent.

Fdisk and remove all partitions and then…

A:\>fdisk /mbr

That will install a new master boot record. You will not see any acknowledgement that the command had any effect. You do not want to use this procedure on a disk with data (http://duxcw.com/digest/guides/hd/rules.htm). See How to Install the Windows 98 Upgrade on a New Hard Disk at http://duxcw.com/digest/Howto/software/windows/upgrade/intro.htm for more info.

>I was thinking of multiple partitions- say 8GB for an OS section, and them equal sized partitions for my wife and kids, maybe with a separate partition for downloading.

I usually try to keep the C: drive to 4 to 10 GBytes depending on the operating system and disk speed. 4 GBytes is find for 98 and a 5,600 RPM drive, but not for Me. 6 to 10 is fine for a 7,200 RPM drive. The maximum partition size for FAT32 is, you guessed it, 32 GBytes. It would take an awfully long time to defrag 80 GBytes, let alone 20.

> Too many?

It’s too many (drives) for my taste. Use folders? Larry

Larry:

Thanks so much. Needless to say, this has been driving me crazy. I've been using WD Diagnostics to write zeros and erase boot partitions (5 minutes should do it, right?), but then have been following up with partitioning off the WD disk, which simply recreates my problem.

Can I repeat your process and add a few questions, just to make sure that I have it right?

First I'll low format again with WD diag, taking the drive down to bare metal. After 5 minutes, this should leave me with a blank slate.

Then, I'll reboot with my Win98 boot floppy, and use fdisk /mbr to create a new master boot record.

I have a master and a slave drive. The master is this new disk and the slave is an older disk I use for backups which already has a boot record. Will fdisk automatically go to the master in this process?

Should I then use fdisk to create new partitions, followed by "format c:" on the new active partition as described in the link you provided? With the new boot record, can I instead use WD diags to partition or will that recreate my problems?

Finally, once c has been formatted, I will follow either Method 1 or 2 in your linked reference.

Have I got it?

Thanks for all of your help.

>First I'll low format again with WD diag, taking the drive down to bare metal.

I don’t know what you mean by this, but one does not low-level format an IDE hard disk… never, unless WD tells you to. It can cause permanent damage. I don’t think WD Diag can do it anyway.

Use WD Diag only to write zeros to the drive and a Win 98 Startup floppy for anything else. Actually, writing zeros should get rid of the problem, but use fdisk /mbr if it doesn’t. Disconnect that other drive when fdisking and formatting. See the first link in my last post. Larry

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