putting in a new hard drive

I am a BEGINNER and just trying to learn...I just installed a new hard drive and got past getting it detected and am stuck...It is an older tower that had a master and slave(it did work) I took the old hard drives out for a better machine. I have played with the jumper and gotten it detected but when I try to run my boot disk to format it keeps telling me Drive not ready Insert diskette in A: press any key to continue.........Any help here is deeply appreciated.

 

A new disk needs to be low level formatted first> the program you need for this is FDISK. This will create the partions required so you can then carry out a "normal" format.

This may help

 

I made a boot disk for windows 98 is that the fdisk or is that something I need to downlaod and put to floppy? As I said I am just starting off and not sure of what I am doing. Sorry if I sound stupid, but I am tying to learn this. Also thanks for the reply.

 

you need to go into your bios and tell it to boot from the cdrom first, it's probably set for floppy then harddrive. you should be able to switch the order to have the cdrom first.

 

I am in the ambios setup -bios setup utilities-----Is thaat where I do this? If so what do I choose?

 

Actually went to advance cmos setup there is a boot up seguence right now it is A:,cdrom,C: I want to choose cdrom,A:,C: or cdrom,C:,A:

 

It is. But you may need to check it is the latest version (the version I use is dated 18/5/00)

 

I used the same boot disk on another p.c. and it worked, allowed me to format hd and install win 98...If it worked one time it should work again correct?

 

Allright now I have a new question...when I boot up I get the following on the screen:
main processorentium
processor clock: 133 mhz


wait...
Pri Master: 1004 Toshiba dvd-rom sd-m1712
Pri Slave: Not detected

Sec Master CDROM Drive-ATPI Incompatible
Press F1 to proceed

can anyone tell me what this means?

 

It appears to me that you have your DVD drive connected to your primary IDE controller as a master drive.
What in essence this is telling you is that the computer will try to boot from the DVD drive and use it as your Hard Drive.
Obviously it isn't a hard drive so this configuration will not work.

On your Motherboard you have two main IDE connectors (where the cables connect the hard drive(s) and DVD/CD drives to the motherboard)
They will be labeled as Primary and Secondary.
You need to have your hard drive connected to the primary IDE controller connection.
The DVD/CD drives should normally be connected to the secondary.

According to what you have told us, it looks as though you crossed these up.

 

ok thank you it is now corrected.......now when I boot up it goes through the detection and I getto an A: prompt.....The way I was told to do it is to
choose boot from cd rom
then choose boot with cd rom support

A:\ Format c: (which right now I get Bad command)
then
E:cd win98
setup

am I doing something wrong here?

When i do get to the A: prompt above it there is:

MSCDEX Version 2.25
copyright (C) microsoft Corp. 1985-1995. All rights reserved.
D: = Driver OEMCD001 unit 0

 

I'm not 100% positive but it looks as though the computer has labelled you hard drive as D instead of C
Try
a:\cd c:\
This is telling the computer to Change Directory (the "cd" part) to the C drive.
If you see
c:\
then your hard drive is indeed recognized as C
If it says invalid drive (or something similar) try
a:\cd d:\
and you see
d:\
then most likely I am right that your hard drive has been labeled D and you can format it by:
first changing back to A
d:\cd a:\
then use the format command
a:\format d:\

Let me know what you find.

 

ok when I type in (From A:\)
\cd c:\ bad command or file
cd c:\ invalid drive specification
\cd d:\ bad command or file name
cd d:\ it skips a line and only the A: is there

I can change from A: to D: by just typing D: (+ enter) or A: (+ enter)

 

I think the procedure would be to use fdisk to create a partition(s) on the new HD. Then format to format the new partitions. Then install Windows. I'm guessing you are going to install Win98.

When you get to the A:\ prompt type dir and look for fdisk.exe and format.exe to make sure both programs are on your floppy. If they are both there we can give you instructions on how to set up the disc.

By the way did the HD come with an installation CD? This will have a program that will prepare the disc for OS install more simply than fdisk.

 

I see fdisk exe. but no format exe....Do you know where I can download it?

 

I'm not finding it easily. But I'm fairly certain when you install 98 it will offer to format for you. So basically you want to use fdisk to create partitions on your HD. If it is a very large HD you may want to have more than one partition.

It has been a while since I've used Fdisk but at the A:\ prompt you just type fdisk and follow the screens. I'm looking for a simple online tutorial to refresh my memory.

 

ok first it asks......do you want to
1.create DOS partician or Loical DOS Drive
2Set active partition
3Delete partition or Logical DOS Drive
4Display partition information


I want option 1 correct?

 

I agree, fdisk will completely erase everything on your c drive.
It still will be necessary to format the disk.
A complete copy of the proper win98 boot disk can be downloaded:
http://www.allbootdisks.com/disk_contents/download/98.html
you should use the "win98_no_ramdrive" or win98se_no_ramdrive" link.
These do include format.com


If you have a cd copy of win98, it should give you the option of doing all this automatically.

 

This looks like a simple guide. http://www.pcabusers.com/fdisk.html You would skip the deleting part. He forgot to mention that the ESC key is used to go backwards to older screens.

Basically, if you are creating only one partition(C you would use all existing space. If you want to divide up your HD and have separate partitions for data such as music you would create the C: (primary partition) with limited space but at least 10GB and then create an extended partition for the rest of the drive. Then when you create logical DOS drives you are just dividing up the extended partition into lettered drives like D: E: etc.

 

I am at the first primary fix it asked how much space I want to use..available is 6142 Mbytes should I use all?

 

6124 Mbytes is about 6gb so I would use it all and not create an extended since that is a fairly small HD.

 

Sorry, I forgot to hit reply button.

Yes, 6142mb is about 6gb so it is a fairly small disk. I would just create the one primary partition and forget about the extended one.

 

I rebooted and now all it does is say remove disks or other media.
Press any key to continue.

 

took out the windows cd and the floppy and now it says No ROM BASIC
SYSTEM HALTED

 

Go back to BIOS and restore the original boot order: A:>CDROM>C:

 

LMAO..........I did that and same thing

 

Put the floppy back in A:

 

It was.....I went to bios and changed to cdrom,A,C and I can get back to A:\ prompt
Now it is same as before I can change from A to D but nothing else (like before)

 

Isn't DOS fun :cry

You should be able to put your win98 CD in the drive and boot up to the CD.
Then follow the yellow brick road

 

ok went to start up with cd rom and it is setting up, right now it is formatting c drive

 

Good. I have to cook dinner so I'll check back later.

 

thanks to all who have been helping me, I appreciate it

 

During instll so far have encountered 2 errors both #65
one is
source file D:\win98\msjava dll'
destination file C:\windows\system\msjava.001=msjava.dll'

and the other is

source file D:\win98\msjdbc10.dll'
destination file C:\windows\system\msjdbc.dll=msjdbc10.dll'


I chose skip file............Any takers on this one?............lol

 

It sounds like your CD is either scratched or dirty.
My advice is to just skip your way through the errors and hope for the best.