In tears... HD issues

I'm just at a loss here... I'm currently going to school for programming, so it's not that I haven't tried everything (prolly making it worse...)

I have a Dell XPS 400 - 80GB HD, 1GB RAM Came with Windows XP Home

I started out having problems with my Windows XP Pro, so I was going to update to Windows 7. Per the install message, I had to do a manual install. I moved the files and settings to my external drive (so far, so good.) When I tried to install, the system reported that the upgrade wasn't possible. So...

I decide to reformat old-school. The only full-install OS's that I have are Win95 and Windows 98. My bootdisk is Windows ME. =/

I boot to the A:\ and run fdisk, choosing to enable large disk support, delete the existing partition and try to create a new one. Problem is, the space that it's reporting available is 10GB. I have an 80GB HD...

Regardless of that, even 10GB should be sufficient to install Win95 or Windows 98, however, I can run the set-up utility and it seems to all work fine until it tries to start from the HD. It tells me there's not sufficient memory, to modify the autoexec.bat and config.sys files.

I'm about in tears here. I've tried calling locally, and as a currently unemployed mother of two, I just can't afford their advice. I need the computer to work on my projects that are due for my classes. I would appreciate any suggestions on how to try and fix this.

Oh! And I've updated the BIOS with a flash from Dell, from ver A03 to A07 today, as part of my effort. Was successfully completed per the message.

 

Welcome to Major Geeks.
How, exactly, did you delete the partition for your install?
Sounds like you're trying to go over top of your XP Pro installation.
Do you have the installation disks for your XP Pro?
Do you have access to another machine to make a slave drive out of your drive? If so, access the Disk Manager, check the partition on your drive, delete if necessary, and do a FULL format, not the quick one.
Reinsert your drive into your machine and try.

 

How, exactly, did you delete the partition for your install?

- I used the fdisk utility from the Windows ME bootdisk I have

Sounds like you're trying to go over top of your XP Pro installation.
Do you have the installation disks for your XP Pro?

- Well, no, because I updated to Pro from an .iso obtained electronically from MSNDAA through my school. I DO have my original XP Home reinstallation disks, but I can't get into ANY version of Windows to be able to run it in a Windows environment.

Do you have access to another machine to make a slave drive out of your drive? If so, access the Disk Manager, check the partition on your drive, delete if necessary, and do a FULL format, not the quick one.
Reinsert your drive into your machine and try.

- I have another system, but the HD I'm having problems with is SATA, and this system isn't set up for SATA, it's strictly IDE (at least that I'm aware of.)

 

I deleted it using fdisk from my Windows ME bootdisk.

No, because it was updated to Pro electronically from the MSDNAA site through my school. I do however, have the original XP Home reinstallation CD, but I can't get into a Windows environment to run it.

The only other system I have is not capable of running the SATA HD in question. =(

 

I've seen mention of the 10gb before but can't remember what caused it. Perhaps someone else will answer.

Just to be clear you have a full install disk for Win98. I do however, have the original XP Home reinstallation CD, but I can't get into a Windows environment to run it. What is this disk is it bootable?
Do the rules for using the Win7 upgrade allow you to use it from a functioning Win98 installation?

Maybe try Partition Wizard to partition your HD. It says Win XP and above but the screen grab has FAT32 partitions. You can use ImgBurn to burn the bootable CD (choose burn image to disc option). Then boot from the CD and see how it reads your HD does it see 80gb? I've never used this software and it has a warning about deleting a system partition so be aware if there is a small partition (less than 500mb) at the front of the disk leave that one alone.