Additional Info:

I've tried setting the drive manually in the Bios to LBA and Large but it doesn't help anything. The bios sees everything correctly, hell even win98se recovery disc formats is to its full capacity.

Im thinking about putting it back in the old machine that i originally set it up on to see if its something with this machine, but that seems unlikely to me.

What if you start off with a smaller partition (under 120 GB, at least), and then expand it after the install?

http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/hard_drives/har … ze_barriers.htm (in the section "The ATA Interface Limit (128 GiB / 137 GB) Barrier") indicates that additional drivers are also required for Windows 98 to function correctly on a larger drive.

Also note:

Some systems with an older BIOS correctly reports the true number of logical cylinders of the drive, making you think the motherboard and BIOS (your system) supports the full size of the hard disk. In reality, the BIOS doesn't have a clue as to the number of cylinders or what to do with them. It's actually just reporting what the drive reports. When you attempt to partition and format the hard disk, you're faced with the stark reality of a 1.024 cylinder limitation, but this is not readily evident. It can have you chasing your tail for hours trying to determine what is wrong. Fortunately though, this is only seen in systems with an older BIOS and the 1,024 cylinder limitation.

It is odd that you say the Windows 98SE recovery disk can format the drive to its full capacity, as that is contrary to the information presented there.

I have the primary dos partition only sized to 4GB. As far as the bios being old the previous shuttle I had which was an older model worked. It's possible they took a back-step and this one is not I will keep that in mind. It should be noted that XP installs just fine, wouldn't the bios affect that as well if this were the case?

As far as being able to partition and format to capacity I can say for sure that FDisk does the full drive as a single partition verified through a 3rd party piece of software. The format itself that takes place I can't say if its working correctly and could be part of the problem, but it doesn't error out on the format.

I was surprised when I put the first 98 system together with this drive and it worked without issue, I had read ahead and expect all kinds of difficulties but had none, so I cant explain how my info is in conflict with the reported info you present.

Unless like I said I installed the developers kit version of 98SE and that was somehow special...but I cant recall for sure and no longer have access to that version, im stuck with a retail version.

Right now Im trying an 82GB drive to see how that goes.

Ok, so

Tried the 82GB drive on this machine, same problem. Then I tried it on the old machine and it worked. Next step is to try the 160GB drive on that old machine again and see if it works again.

What could be special about that old machine that would let it work like that? Even if the new machine had a problem specifically with Win98SE I wouldn't think it would manifest during the initial file copy.

Could it be something in the hardware that doesn't like FAT32?

I guess the hardware in the new machine doesn't support FAT32 properly for the windows install.

After getting the 82GB drive up and running I moved it to the new machine. It booted up and started adding new hardware, of course there are some important components that it didn't have the drivers for but it worked.

I guess since I was missing so many drivers windows wouldn't see my CD-ROM for me to try to see if there were drivers on the OS disc. So i decided to try to reinstall windows since it was already readin and working and wouldn't you know it I got the same error when it tried to copy files to the 82GB drive.

I guess the next step is to copy all of the cab files I'll need to the HD on the old machine, it seems unlikely the drivers will be there for the hardware anyways but its worth a shot.

Can someone please remind me of all the files I need to copy to the harddrive or if there is some switch to use to install the cab files during install?

The 160GB works in the old machine again too. Damn, I wish I knew where the incompatibility lay with this new machine.

I have no idea what you are doing anymore.

Shagittarius wrote:

I guess the hardware in the new machine doesn't support FAT32 properly for the windows install.

FAT32 in itself does not inherently require hardware support. Besides, if that was the issue, you could fix it by setting up a 2 GB FAT16 partition.

I guess since I was missing so many drivers windows wouldn't see my CD-ROM for me to try to see if there were drivers on the OS disc.

That doesn't make any sense either. If you've been toying with your BIOS settings (for example, if you left something on Large instead of LBA), that would be much more likely to cause problems. If possible, it is best to leave such BIOS settings on "Auto", even if you think you know what they should be.

You should check the Master/Slave jumpers on your drives as well – I advise against using "Cable Select". Note that some hard drives have different jumper positions for "Master with slave present" and "Master with no slave".

Have you checked to see if there is a BIOS update available for your motherboard?

Thanks for your help, for now I have gone back to the old computer. I'll look at this again in the future and try your suggestions.

Originally the bios was set to Auto so I tried that.

The jumpers are set correctly.

I haven't updated the bios , i'll have to see if shuttle still has them for these old machines.