missing operating system

[Kristina]

i'm trying format my hard drive .. after i formatted it does not see drive c:.. and partition is active.. windows 98 startup disk

[DMR]

.. after i formatted it does not see drive c:..

What exactly do you mean by "does not see" the drive? Are you saying that the installation CD doesn't recognize the drive, or do you mean something else?

[Kristina]

i'm trying to install 98.. when i run fdisk ..create a primary dos partition , activate it.. restart computer.. and i have to do that over again...can anybody help.. thank you

[alc6379]

so... you type in format c:, and it doesn't do anything?

You do have to format it, you know... after running fdisk.

[Kristina]

i do know that you have to format it..when i reboot it says my drive is not partition again... so i start all over

[caperjack]

I know, you know what you are doing but will post this anyway .
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=http://support.microsoft.com:80/support/kb/articles/q255/8/67.asp&NoWebContent=1

[BinaryMayhem]

intresting... what are you formating the partion as? and what are you booting with? sounds like your formating as NTFS (or lunix partion) or something, and trying to boot with win 95/98 using fat/fat32...

what programs are you using, and what type of filesystem did you format too.

[alc6379]

So you run FDISK, restart, and then FDISK says that the drive is not partitioned? Have you changed/reseated your IDE cables lately?

[rkhurana]

i'm trying format my hard drive .. after i formatted it does not see drive c:.. and partition is active.. windows 98 startup disk

if you dont have any data on any partion in this disk, You can try this , restart the system , run fdisk delelte all the partions , restart again create a parttion , activate it and foramt it now .............should work!

[Puckdropper]

When you format, do you use the /s switch? You may also want to try the /u switch.

(/s -- Copy system Files. /u -- Unconditional Format.)