Specific help on reformatting a hard drive needed

Hello,
I'm attempting to reformat the c drive on a windows 98 computer. I have searched several different sources to find detailed help, but I'm still having problems. So far I have done the following:

.Created a Startup Disk floppy
.Backed up my important files
.Put the floppy in and restarted the computer, and waited for some sort of A: prompt to appear, but it doesn't.
.Tried restarting in MS Dos mode, and a C:\Windows\ prompt appears.

I don't know what to do next.
Please help,
Eoin

 

Hi Eoin & welcome to BBS

restarting in MSDOS mode isn't what you want, you should be restarting the computer with the startup floppy in the drive

(or, turning the computer on with the floppy in the A: drive will do the same thing)

but it seems you have tried that:

could you let us know pls:
- what (if anything) you get on the screen?
- does the floppy light come on?

best wishes, HJ.

 

Since you made the floppy, the drive works.
So you must not have set it to boot to floppy before anything else.
You need to enter the bios setup and change the boot order to floppy A, CDROM, Hard disk 0
Normally when you first power on your computer it will say something like "Press DEL to enter setup" (or F2) just as you hear the post beep. Do this.

H9ow to configure your bios

How to use fdisk and format to prepare your drive

How to install win98 on a computer with no operating system


Make sure that before you format your drive, you know all the hardware you have and have downloaded and burned to cdr all the drivers for such things as your motherboard, modem, video card etc which you will need if you do not want to just be able to run in something resembling safe mode .Devices do not work without drivers and win98 has only a very limited supply of generic ones .