reformatting hard drive

Hi I was thinking about doing a possible reformatting of my harddrive in order to wipe the hard drive clean an start fresh, and I was wondering if someone could help walk me through on how to do that because I dont know where to begin to do it.

 

Thank you for those steps but I dont know if this makes a difference but on the box of the Windows 98 SE it says Upgrade on there as well does that make a difference when I am to do so? I just saw that just now.

 

This is how I install 98Se Upgrade. This is for a formatted drive.
Boot the computer with a boot floppy, choose CD rom support. Watch the screen for the drive letter for the CD, it will not be the usual letter. It could be E:, use it in place of the X down below. When it is finished booting you will see A:\> on the screen. Use these commands.
sys a: c:
md c:\win98
md c:\win95
insert 98 CD
copy X:\win98\*.* c:\win98
insert 95 CD
copy X:\win95\*.* c:\win95
Remove floppy and CD. Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to reboot. My first command made the hard drive bootable, just enough to install windows. You will see C:\> very quickly. The following starts windows setup.
c:\win98\setup
As mentioned before, the install process will ask for proof of a previous version, just Browse over to C:\Win95. It will read through them and continue.
This method has a small and a big advantage. You do not need to switch CD's during the install process, and later on when windows is running you will not be prompted to insert the Windows CD when installing or upgrading other items. It will go straight to the folder it was installed from. You can delete the C:\Win95 folder when setup is complete.
The very first thing you should install is the motherboard drivers, then video card, then sound. It would be a good idea to remove any PCI modems before installing windows, you can put it back in after the other hardware is going.

 

would this also be good to do if I get a virus in my hard drive?

 

I followed the directions of markp62 and up until it was suppose to show <b>C:\</b> and it didnt do the C:\ command it just loaded Windows 98 and it still had the same stuff on the computer it didnt reformat or clear out everything or anything. What should I do?

 

You would need to wipe the drive and format before doing what markp62 suggested. Boot from floppy, type format C:, answer yes to large drive support, hit enter for no label and yes to 'are you sure?'. Then follow previously given instructions.

I am also going to repeat Christers statement,

 

Hey LazyBOy

Here's a few links that should help you...

Partitioning Hard Drive
Formating Hard Drive
Guide to installing Win98

Site has a few other good guides...PC Guides and FAQS

Hope these help...

 

Sorry to confuse you, LazyBOy. You had mentioned a clean install, so I thought you had already formatted the drive. When the drive is formatted, there is nothing there.
Hmm, noahdfear has made a slight error about format, you will not see a question about 'large disk support'. Fdisk must have been on his mind. When Format is started, you will not see a question about large disk support.
If you use this command to format the drive, you will not need to use the sys a: c: command, as format can make the drive bootable.
You could use these modified sequence of commands. Choose with CD rom support when booting with the floppy. Note the only difference is the first command.
format /s c:
Type a Y that you want to proceed, when prompted for a volume label, just hit Enter. You will see a message about the system files being transferred.
md c:\win98
md c:\win95
insert 98 CD
copy X:\win98\*.* c:\win98
insert 95 CD
copy X:\win95\*.* c:\win95
Remove floppy and CD. Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to reboot. My first command formatted and made the hard drive bootable, just enough to install windows. You will see C:\> very quickly. The following starts windows setup.
c:\win98\setup

 

I GUESS! Sorry about that LazyBOy.
Thanks for clearing that up Markp62.

 

So in doing what Markp62 says that clears my hard drive clean right as well as making it where I can install win 98 SE right? or do I have to also follow the links that dobhar provided as well? if so (following dobhar) in what order do I go?

Sorry Im a bit confused here and I don't know which to do.

What I wanted to do and sorry for not being clear on what I wanted earlier is that I want to learn how to clear out my hard drive completely making it like brand new and then I want to learn how to install Win 98 SE, sorry for the confusion on my part and thank you all so much for helping me with this.

 

Yes. Following markp62's directions from here

down in his last post will wipe your drive clean and get your OS reinstalled. So will following the instructions in dobhar's links, starting with Formatting and finishing with Guide. The Partitioning is not necessary unless you want to create separate spaces on the harddrive, for the OS on 1 and data on another, or if the drive currently has more than 1 partition and you want to make it all 1 again. If you did want to partition the drive, you would do that first. Probably best to skip that this time around and just get familiar with format and install.
markp62's instructions create a directory on the hard drive and copy the contents of the installation disk to it, and allows for running setup from the harddrive rather than from the disk, which is a very good suggestion. I have recently done three installs from the CD that failed resulting in starting over and running it from the harddrive.
Read through the links and compare the similarities to markp62 's instructions and when you feel you understand it, go for it! By all means, if you have more questions, feel free to ask.

 

To your first question, yes.
Those links concerning formatting and installing will show you what to expect to see.
Unless you want to delete and create Primary, Extended [and their Logical Drives] partitions, you do not need to do anything at the partitioning link.
If you do those commands exactly as I posted them, you should have no problems. They are in the correct order as you need to do them. These are standard commands for the way I install.
If you want to know what md does, that is short for mkdir, or create a directory, you may know them as Folders.
When 98Se has finished installing and is running, you can delete the Win95 folder. Leave the Win98 folder for the reason when you are updating or doing anything with hardware, you will not be prompted for the Win98 CD, windows will go straight to that folder and get what it needs.

 

I ran into a problem. I put in the windows 98 start up disk and it asks me if I want to boot with or without cd-rom support. I do it with Cd-ROm support and then after checking the cd drives it goes to the A: command sequence I type in format /s C: and I answer with Y to format and delete everything our of the disk but when it reads the floppy drive it says I have insufficient memory and it cancels the formatting of C:

 

Try the format without CD rom support. You may have failing memory sticks [RAM].

 

Ok doing the format without the CD support worked : ) thank you all so much for helping me although I have a few minor problems but I saw a few other threads that have the same problem and Ill look at them. But thank you all so much how can I repay you guys for that?

 

By always posting back with results, good or bad and by recommending this site to your friends.

 

Ditto.