Cannot Install Win98

HI All, i am having problems installing Win98. i think it is either 1 of 2 things. first, is that my hdd is an SATA drive which windows cant recognize (though it does when doing the scandisk prior to install). the other is that the drive is 250gb in size. i am able to get through the scan disk, but when i actually get to the install process i get a general protection error or a suswin error (i think thats it). anyone have any suggestions?

thanks
BladeTurbo

 

Blade,

1. Win98 can not recognize a drive bigger than 137 gig but there are other limitations. The BIOS might not recognize such a large hard drive 40 gig if it is older.

2. Here is some additional information that might be helpful:

Microsoft Windows 98SE has a native limitation of 137GB supporting ATA interface disc drives that are attached to traditional Primary and Secondary IDE Channels on the motherboard. In this configuration Windows 98SE will not create partitions greater than 137GB.

Also, the native Windows 98SE ScanDisk and Defrag utilities are limited to smaller partition sizes and may not function on partitions greater than 127GB. There are no fixes available from Microsoft for this limitation. Third-party software may be available to defrag and monitor larger FAT32 file systems. Seagate recommends creating partitions of a size that can be managed by the native Windows 98SE ScanDisk and Defrag utilities.

Intel offers drivers to support the full capacity of drives larger than 137 GB on motherboards equipped with the Intel 800 Series chipset. For help identifying your Intel chipset see Intel's Chipset Identification page. If you are not sure what kind of chipset your motherboard has, contact your system or motherboard manufacturer. If your motherboard is unsupported by a non-Microsoft driver, Windows 98 support of ATA drives larger than 137GB are possible on an ATA controller card. Otherwise, if you plan to upgrade to an operating system that has native support of 48-bit addressing, the drive could be prepared up to 137GB with the remaining capacity added later.

The Intel Application Accelerator (IAA) v2.3 is listed compatible with Windows 98SE. Detailed information and the latest version of the driver is available from Intel's website.

George

 

thanks, ill try that tonight.

edit: my bios was able to see the entire drive, it is a newer abit motherboard.

 

Partitioning (BTW...Hi!)

If you have not used partitioned drives before, they are very helpful. You can format your old Windows without losing a lot of data. You can format your C: drive and if your data and applications are on another drive they will still be there when you reinstall Windows.

I have my partitions like this:
C: is the Windows partition, try to keep it small.
D: is my scribble pad, where I have temporary files like CD and DVD burning files. You can also transfer your Temporary Internet Files there, etc. This reduces fragmentation on your main drive(the C: drive). I can also delete the D: drive if I want to, using Partition Magic, in case I add another harddrive that will then take the D: drive letter.
E: is for Applications. I have made a folder E:\Program Files. When applications ask where to be installed, I just change the drive letter from C: to E:, so from C:\Program Files\Xprogram to E:\Program Files\Xprogram. When you (or if you have to) format and reinstall Windows, reinstall applications back to their original folder on the E: drive, voila, all your game saves and modifications are still there.
F: is the Data drive. Documents, downloads, drivers and keepable files (eg. mp3s). I think you can move the "My Documents" folder to another drive (although I might be thinking of Win XP). All the data together on one drive makes it simple to back-up.

Those are my methods. Think about how you will set up your drives.

Matt

 

I echo the ideas set forth by mattman

PARTITION the HD.

And then use the suggestions he set forth.

As he mentions, it as Great Method of DATA protection if the C: ( OS ) drive needs reformating.

BillyBob

 

A new hard drive doesn't have to take D:. Just partition it using logical partitions only, and then it will get drive letters after the first drive gets all of its letters. You can't boot MS-DOS or Windows from a drive that has no primary partition, but several other operating systems can boot off a logical drive.

My C: for Win98SE is 1.25 gigs now. It started at 900 megs but then needed a little more.
D: is applications. Giving them this early drive letter helps to ensure their drive letter will never change no matter what partitioning stuff I do in the future. (I really hate drive letters. I like the Unix structure much better.)
That's it for HD1.
On HD2, E: and F: are 8 gigs each, the max I can get with FAT32 and keeping a 4K cluster size. I don't like wasting space. Both are used for data/documents/etc.
G: is a 120 meg partition I use for swap. I set the cluster size to 32K to help with its performance.

 

well, i got it working. i had to install win98 on an ide drive and disconnect my sata rdive during the install. after i loaded windows, i installed the sata drivers and plugged up my sata drive. it works great.