I am trying to remove windows XP and put on win 98, to a friends IPC laptop.

The C drive is a FAT32 file system, so I should just be able to put in a 98 boot disk and then format c:, but the boot disk does not work in this machine, although it does in others.

I have checked the bios, and floppy boot is enabled, but it does not boot the floppy, it gets stuck in a loop saying:-

searching for boot record from cdrom...not found
searching for boot record from floppy..OK

if you press the spacebar it repeats the above, after re reading the floppy disk.

So, how can I proceed? Manually delete things from XP explorer then reboot? Or do I need a special floppy boot disk? The floppy is also working as it can read and write files.

Any ideas?

Gareth

 

fdisk it. that should wipe XP off the HDD!

(p/s i think might have to use the command fdisk/mbr)

 

you dont need to use fdisk/mbr as xp doesnt change the mbr in any major way unlike linux, you can just boot off a boot disk and run format c: /q reboot and boot of boot disk again and run setup off the cd

 

if you want i can send you a windows 98 boot disk maker

 

I cannot seem to get a boot disk to work, though.

I created a dos start up disk from xp, but this does not have any tools and is the wrong dos version to use my 98 boot disk tools.

Why does my 98 boot disk work on my main PC but not this laptop?

Gareth

 

unknown but the bootdisk maker i have has yet to not work on any pc i have tried it on, the offer is there

 

In that case, I would like to try it, if it available.

If you can email it as per my profile, or I can contact you offline from my work account, which has no attachemetn limits.

Gareth

 

yhm

 

try formatting the floppy disk in the laptop before making the bootdisk. there can be incompatabilities between various brands of floppy drive, and there can also be problems if you use preformatted floppy disks.

 

dog, whats this boot disk maker called?

Ta

 

boot98se but there are a few good ones about

 

Another thing worth trying is to boot off the Win98 CDROM. Also check your bios to make sure the boot order is right.