installing win98 on pc with ntfs \ VOGONS

installing win98 on pc with ntfs

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First post, by ante1234and

Posted on 2025-06-26, 20:19

ante1234and Offline

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hi!
i have a pentium 2 computer with windows xp.
it has 2 hard drives and both has ntfs partitions on them. i'm trying to put windows 98 on this pc. i did this by removing one of the hard drives and put in a new one that has fat16 or fat32, then, it can't format the hard drive when i used a startup disk, when booting from win98 cd, it says my hard drive is corrupted and exits the win98 setup. what can i do to fix this?

my computer specs:

hard drive with 32 gb ntfs
second hard drive with 15 gb i want to put win98 on.
128 mb ram

Reply 1 of 8, by dominusprog

Posted on 2025-06-26, 20:36

dominusprog Offline

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Format the first partition with FAT32 using the FDISK, install the Win98 then install the WinXP on a second partition.

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Reply 2 of 8, by chinny22

Posted on 2025-06-27, 00:47

chinny22 Offline

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Always best to go oldest to newest so

Install the 15GB hard drive as the Primary Master
Install the 32GB hard drive as either Secondary Master or Slave.

Use Fdisk to delete all partitions on the 15GB drive, they will be marked as non dos.
If Fdisk complains it cant delete partitions, start XP setup to delete the partitions, but don't create any. Instead reboot using your Win98 disc and use Fdisk again.
Install Win98,
Install WinXP

This way Windows XP will sort all the duel booting setup for you.

Reply 3 of 8, by ante1234and

Posted on 2025-06-28, 20:35

ante1234and Offline

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chinny22 wrote on 2025-06-27, 00:47:
Always best to go oldest to newest so […]
Show full quote

Always best to go oldest to newest so

Install the 15GB hard drive as the Primary Master
Install the 32GB hard drive as either Secondary Master or Slave.

Use Fdisk to delete all partitions on the 15GB drive, they will be marked as non dos.
If Fdisk complains it cant delete partitions, start XP setup to delete the partitions, but don't create any. Instead reboot using your Win98 disc and use Fdisk again.
Install Win98,
Install WinXP

This way Windows XP will sort all the duel booting setup for you.

the problem is i can't get into windows xp
and i can't format the hard drive.
when i trying i get this message:
pxe-e61 media test failure check cable.
happens with both hard drives.

Reply 4 of 8, by chinny22

Posted on 2025-06-30, 00:55

chinny22 Offline

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PXE means it is trying to boot from the network. Either because it can't find the hard drive or no valid OS is installed.

For now remove the 32GB drive
Install the 15GB drive as Primary master
Install the CD drive as Secondary master
Ensure both drives have the correct jumpers set.

Boot from your XP CD. You should be able to see and delete any partitons.
If not then the drive is most likey faulty.

Reply 5 of 8, by ante1234and

Posted on 2025-06-30, 22:03

ante1234and Offline

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i don't have a win xp cd, it came installed on the computer when i purchased it. i tried reinstall xp by downloading a iso and made a bootable cd with imgburn but that didn't help

Reply 6 of 8, by chinny22

Posted on 2025-07-01, 01:28

chinny22 Offline

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For the above steps any NT flavor of Windows will work so NT4, 2000, XP, Vista, etc.
But your also going to want to have a working bootable XP CD ready as ideally you will want to do clean install of both Win98 then XP

Reply 7 of 8, by myne

Posted on 2025-07-01, 04:33

myne Offline

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Boot 98 CD.

Choose dos with CD support.
Not setup.

Run "fdisk"
Follow instructions.
Delete all.
Reboot
Boot to setup
Follow instructions

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Reply 8 of 8, by st31276a

Posted on 2025-07-01, 09:24

st31276a Offline

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You can also nuke the first couple of sectors of the hard disk with dd on a linux live boot disk

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=1M count=1

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