tonight, i was at my girlfriends house tonight and was workin on her computer. I had to format her hard drive, because her computer was messed up bad. She has windows 98 Pro, and i put in the disc in the D:, and had the startup disc in the a:. When the command promt came up, after i selected start the computer with CD-ROM support, i typed "format c:" after it was done, i figured i could restart the computer, and the disc would automaticly start, and i could install the OS. But it sent me back to the command promt, and i dont know what command will start the windows 98 CD in the CD rom drive to install.
go to bootdisk.com and get a win 98 bootdisk , put it on a floppy then throw it in there before you boot up. Basically, your PC wont be able to even see the D drive (cd-rom) until you load the drivers for it.
That boot disk should get you going. post up if you need more help.
you have to put the operating sytem back on it when you format it. otherwise it is just a data disk that you can't boot off of, like a floppy.
it has been a while since i had a 98 machine, but if i remember correctly, the command is "format c: /s"
now you have to boot off a bootable floppy. i think you can use "sys c:" to transfer the system files after it is formatted. or you can reformat it with the above command.
I've got the bootable floppy that i made with the windows 98 disc. I have not yet ran the sys c: command, and i think thats what i messed up on, because i've been reading, and i need to do this. I'm gonna try and, and if theres no luck, i was reading my Windows 98 book and it says that you can install windows 3.1 which i have, and upgrade to windows 98 easily.
Thanks again for all the replys, i really hope this works.