Web-searching for this is infuriating me (all results are warez/nonsense/etc and there are (literally) billions of them), so I'm asking here in the hope that a human being can actually interpret this question:

I'm trying to install Win98SE, I've got the disc in the drive (!!!), and when it gets to formatting the hard-disk it insists that I need to insert the Win98 CD-ROM into the drive (you know, the disc that's already in the drive). Of course removing the disc, changing discs, etc it doesn't care it's locked in a loop of beeping and fail. I've already partitioned the drives for it, and the drives do work, so whats the problem?

Drives are both 40GB, the primary is part'd 6+18+12, the secondary is part'd 18+18, all FAT32 LBA. When I let it (98 CDROM) configure/part/etc it seemed to have issues. Can it really just not handle the ocean of size that is 40GB? (I thought the LBA limit was more like 137GB).

For extra style points on Win98's part (you know, because it's such a paragon of consistency, stability, and reliability): I used this same disc not but two days ago to install the same OS on the same machine on a different disk. 😵