HELP! Win 98 can't load onto HD. Error message.SOLVED!

[Fireman]

Solved. Thanks!

I'm trying to load 98se on a clean formatted HD. It is a Quantum Bigfoot from an HP machine.
No other HP components are in the comp.
I formatted,
Boot from floppy or CD ROM,
Windows rund the system check and scandisk,
Starts the instalation program,
THEN.....an error message appears:

Message SU0013
Setup cannot create files on your start up drive and cannot set up Windows 98.
If you have HPFS or NTFS, you must create an MS-DOS boot partition.
If you have LANtastic server or SuperStor compression, disable it before running setup.

WTF? Please help.

Here are the rest of the specs:
DFI MoBo 440BX
PIII 450
256 Kingston PC100
24X CD ROM
ATI Rage Fury

 

[bozo1]

Have you created a partition using FDisk? You need to do that first and then do a DOS format afterwards.

 

[Fireman]

Yes. one large partition.

 

[bacillus]

hmm, what was on the hdd previously??

 

[tennesota]

You may want to FDISK the drive again. As bozo1 points out be sure to format the partition afterwards. The partition also needs to be active so windows knows where to find the boot files.

Bacillus raises a good question. What was previously on the drive? It is possible that Windows is detecting a different file system on the drive. Again, a good format might take care of it.

There are times when I will use a hard drive manufacturers diagnostic tools. The tools usually include an option to low-level format the drive. LLF is a process that writes all zeroes to the drive, it's similar to starting out with a drive fresh out of the bag, the drive will not have data on it.

If you decide to do the LLF, you do so at your own risk because you will lose any data on the drive.

 

[Fireman]

I'll try the LLF. The preveious info on the drive was Win95 in an HP machine. i wanted to start out clean. When I ran FDISK it said there was already one large, active partition. So then I formatted.

 

[Thor86]

Off topic, but Quantum Bigfoot? Talk about ancient hardware. Make sure the "breather" hole isn't blocked. LOL!