HDD wants DOS Boot Partition

I had formatted the c drive of my Samsung 40 GB Hard disk and installed Win XP after Win 98. During the installation I had converted the FAT32 partition to NTFS. Later when I formatted and tried to install Win 98,it failed. I connected the HD to another PC as slave. The HDD is shown as a single unit with type mentioned as "Bad" through Partition magic 7.0 & the partitions are not displayed. But they are individually displayed under "My Computer". The drive cannot be converted to FAT32 through Partition Magic. However I formatted the partitions individually and converted them to FAT32 type. When I made the HDD as master to its own PC and tried to install Win98 it failed. It wanted DOS Boot partition. I tried to create DOS Boot partition thru FDISK but it doesn't work. Thru DOS, the C:, D:, E: & F: Drives are shown as FAT32 in nature. Plz guide me how to rectify the Hard disk so that Win98 may be installed on it.

How is your HDD partitioned?

In most cases, it is

Code:

ROOT
-- Primary Partition 1
  -- C Drive (Active)
-- Extended Partition
  -- Logical Partition 1 (D Drive)
  -- Logical Partition 2 (E Drive)
  -- Logical Partition 3 (F Drive)

oops! I am confused....how to check all that? Better is there any way of removing all those partitions and start with a unpartitioned HD again?

To check wat type of partitions u hv, do this:

Control Panel> Administrative tools> Computer Management> Storage> Disk management.

And here u will get all info abt the no. of partitions and their types(FAT32 or NTFS) u can get details abt it.

Cheers n e-peace.....

G

check out this *fdisk.radified.com/ for fdisk info.

and you can check *www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/tutorial116.html for the info ashu was pointing at !

:))

so r u advising to make the drive a slave and perform all those steps?

I think u are in trouble.
If u have OS installed. dont go through the risky FDISK
Install Partition Magic. and see yours topic will end here.

did u activate the primary partition using fdisk?

@hafees
lemme know how to activate the primary partition using fdisk

i fu want to repartion ur HDD, boot from a floppy disk or win98 cd.
Enter fdisk in command prompt.

Select option 3) Delete Partitions
In the new screen Select 3) Delete Logical partition

Repeat until u delete all logical partitions

Then
Select option 3) Delete Partitions
In the new screen Select 2) Delete Extended partition

Now
Select option 3) Delete Partitions
In the new screen Select 1) Delete Primary partition

Now exit fdisk and restart ur PC.

Again start fdisk.
Now select option 2.)Create Partition
1.)Create Primary partition
It wud ask if u wish to allocate all free disk space to tis drive. Say no
Enter a size for primary partition.
It wud ask if u want to make tis partition active.

Say yes.

Now select option 2.)Create Partition
2.)Create Extended partition
Now here when It asks if u wish to allocate all free disk space to tis drive. Say YES

it wud now prompt No logical drives defined. Do u wish to create logical drives.

Say yes
Create logical partitions of you r preferred size. Tis process will continue until free space is completely allocated. You can hit Esc to return back.

Now after u finish finalising ur partitions exit fdisk.

Now format all these drives and restart.

If you donot want to lose the datas in partition, you should not perform all the steps above.

Steps

(1) Run fdisk from bootable floppy / CD etc
It will ask for enabling large disk support. You should press Y

(2) Select Create Primary Partition ...

(3) From there you will get an option to activate the primary partition.