Can't start win98

My notebook refuses to boot & gets stuck when Windows 98 appears then Abort,Fail, Retry message appears & when Abort is selected "VFBACKUP Could Not Load VFD.VXD" appears. Tried as suggested here but still unable to boot. Tried to reinstall win98 but when scandisk runs it gets stuck at 4% when scanning directory structure. Also tried to look at c:\windows\system\dir , it shows "Not ready reading drive C" followed by "abort,fail,retry ". Is my hard disk a goner? Anyone?

 

Did you try repartitioning and formatting it?

 

Yes tried formatting but it failed

 

When you say you tried to re-format, did that also include re-partitioning?

 

Yes, partitioned it & tried to format it but stuck at 1% formatting and the following msg appeared:
Not ready
Format terminated

 

well, why not try this debug to make certain all partions are gone?

A:\>debug <enter>
-F 200 L1000 0 <enter>
-A CS:100 <enter>
xxxx:0100 MOV AX,301 <enter>
xxxx:0103 MOV BX,200 <enter>
xxxx:0106 MOV CX,1 <enter>
xxxx:0109 MOV DX,80 <enter>

(80 for hd 0 or 81 for hd 1 )

xxxx:010C INT 13 <enter>
xxxx:010E INT 20 <enter>
xxxx:0110 <enter>
-g <enter>
Program terminated normally
-q<enter>
then fdisk and if it doesn't work, then your hdd is fried.

 

failing the above. go to your Harddrive manufactures site and download a low level format tool. try running that.
Note*any information on the disk is gone, inlcuding other partiting besides the one you wish to install windows on*