In Win98 SE, I have done fdisk and format, then tried installing windows again. After I have typed in setup, and after it says copying files, it goes back to the drive prompt. I am assuming I have done fdisk wrong. Do you create a primary partition AND an ext partition, and if so, how do I correctly do this using Fat32? Thanks for any help in advance.

Fdisk is one of those "finiky" programmes you need to be wary of. It does not like anything to be wrong with the hard disk and DESTROYS all the data you have on the hard disk so please backup important data!!. Also, you need to remove the current partition on the hard disk first to use Fdisk. Here are basic instructions on using Fdisk.

1. Run Fdisk (Usually done from the Dos Prompt)
2. Go to the option to Delete Partition
3. (Depending on what partition you had on there,) you need to select the correct option (for example, to remove an XP partition select option 4, to remove an old Windows 98/ME partition select option 1.)
4. It wll then ask you to confirm you want to delete the partition by asking you to type in the "Volume Name" of the hard disk (This is displayed for you on the screen, so just copy it.)
5. After this is done you will return to the "Create Partition" menu.
6. You now need to create a partition, so select option 1.
7. Now, depending on how many partitions you want to create on your hard disk will depend on what options you select here, but usually, its just the one, so click "yes" when it asks you to use the full hard disk for the one partition.
8. That should be it! Now you can re-format the hard disk and start the installation of Windows 98!

Hope this helps!! If there are ommissions or errors, please accept my appology! This is done from memory and its 3.30am! But It should be ok! Any probs, please ask!!

Yogi aka Steve

Thanks so much for the info. I actually figured it out myself. I had the fdisk correct, so I changed the OS2 setting in BIOS. That seemed to work as the computer took windows. Thanks again.

Hi,I am new user of MSI note book that just buy without include OS,I try to set XP to it.at the first I follow the instruction to set up window,that I must first is to use in comand dos by using fdisk,after that I delete the primary and try to devide drive in to 2 part,but after I finish it,I forgot to set active partition, so after I reboot, I can't use dos like before and I see only the black screen with message "no active partition found"....Now my problem is that I can't use comand dos.My question is that : Is there any way to get back the dos to use command again,if now I can use only BIOS.

please help...........quickly