i got kids a cheap pc ,but cant get winme on,i have a disk for win me cd and the product key ,and i down loaded winme start up floppy. ive tried to do (fdisk) but its telling me to put in a volume label,before i can defrag it ,im lost eny1 help on this
In order to ID the volume label of a drive, boot with your floppy disk...then type in vol at the command prompt and hit enter. If you wish to remove the volume label before using FDISK, just format the drive, and when asked to enter a label, choose No.
just press enter to not have a volume label. i usually put the individual's name there or put mypc. volume label is not mandatory.
tyvm for your help,i got so lost i gave the pc into the shop this morning,ill kill 2 birds with 1 stone ,i decided to get a bigger hard drive,thanx again
this is murder i put pc in shop ,got my windows me ,but ,the shop cant put another hd in as it wont take they couldnt explain Y,this is like my other pc it has a 40 gig and that one just shows as 12.3 gig i am a dead end
Depending on how old it is, there are restrictions back than that won't allow older motherboards to recognize large hard drive sizes, or other features the newer hard drives have on them such as 48bit addressing. Unless the board has an update to the BIOS...it's unlikely (unless you partition that drive into smaller partitions) that the drive can be used on that system.
john1690 Reboot your computer and choose "f8" then Dos prompt, and then at C:\ type fdisk c:\fdisk (if you want to do it from a floppy then at the c:\ prompt type A:\ to change drives and then fdisk. You should see a menu with several choices. Choose the one that asks you to delete the Dos partition and agree, primary Dos partition agree, and then you will see some info that asks you to give volume label. Look for your C:\ drive and use the label you see there, if there's none then just hit enter. It's been a while since I've used a non NTSF file system. The partition label is not all that important to get things setup. Your system should however not have to go through all that, you should be able to boot from the CD rom. Sometimes getting windows to recognize and boot the CD rom you have to make some changes in your setup bios. Turn on your computer and enter setup (Usually the info on how to enter setup is given on the first boot screen. When you're in setup look for boot priority or something similar and you should you see a boot order with a floppy and then your hard disk followed by your CD rom. Disable the floppy and change the boot order making your CD rom first. Make sure that windows is in the drive and then save and exit, that should have your CD rom, recognized. If that doesn't work then return to you bios and go to boot order and disable everything but the CD rom and save and exit and the CD rom should boot now for sure. Yes to boot from CD rom and yes to setup windows from CD rom. After the installation has began you can during the install return to boot order and enable the drives that you disabled. Sorry if this is a bit incoherent but I was in a bit of a hurry. LOL Let me know how it works and if you need to PM me.
what does the motherboard bios sees the drive capacity as as it might see it as right size & dos sees it & but doesn't sees it correctly. once formated the drive should be seen as correct size not during format process when dos says formatting 12.3gig.
Actually the correct size should be reported before formatting except as Morph stated if and when the hard disk is too large for ME to read.
i've seen 98 bootdisk when formating a 40gig hd to be less than half of stated size til the end than reports true size & not small size.
I sure hope we haven't confused you even more John! @ddp...ya know, when I first had 98 it was on a 20gig drive...in a Gateway Performance 500. Other times I have used it in dual boot configs, I never used a larger partition for DOS based OSes then 20 gigs, so as far as experiencing issues with large drives and ME, I wouldn't know for fact. I've always tried to keep the hardware specs well within range for those OSes because they are so tempermental..., and unstable when pushed to the edge. Though I am pretty sure ME should install to a 40 gig, I am pretty sure it won't install to a 160 or above. I believe the limit for pre-XP OSes is 137. (with the exception of course, 2000 but I have not tested that OS on a large drive yet either)
ddp/Morph Hard disk size can be a problem but the problem's not in Windows 98 it's in the bios. When Windows 98 hit the mark the largest hard disk available was about 8.5 gigs. Some later machines that were sold included updated bios' that were able to handle a larger hard disk. I had a friend who'd purchased a K6 machine and he tried to install a 40 gig Western digital but his system didn't even recognize the drive. I used a little German application called CTbios to find out who manufactured his motherboard and to identify his chip set. Once that was done I downloaded the updated bios (with my fingers crossed) and installed it. Once that was done his hard disk was recognized and Win98 installed without a hitch. A new machine with WinMe however should be able easily recognize his hard disk. Some machines won't boot the install CD unless the boot order is changed or in some cases the hard disk needs to be disabled (windows will still install to it)until the process is started.
i know about the 6.4, 8.4 & 10gig limitations in the bios as ran into that with a friend of my mother's who wanted a bigger hd, 40 gig. bios was not reading the drive at all. replaced the board & it saw the full capacity of hd. i'm running a 160gig on my win98se but is partitioned to c:40gig for windows & d:120gig for data.
Ya know, I went back thru the posts just to make sure I wasn't missing something... Check the jumper settings on that drive!! Some drives have a size limitation jumper that limits the size of the drive to a certain amount. No BIOS, or Operating System can interfere with that setting, as it's a physical limitation setting on the drive itself. WARNING!! If that drive does have that jumper, and it's set for the small size limitation...IF you have any information you need from that drive, please remove it before you remove that jumper as you will lose all the data on the drive. @ddp: Did you try to install 98 to the full 160?..or did you set it up that way from the start?
