DaveDDS wrote on Yesterday, 15:32:

Look to me that it's the right archive, and you DO have "DSKWRITE.EXE"

So i did!

Im from Windows wrote on Yesterday, 13:02:

I just reboot it and tried again At the A:\ command. I type C:\ or E:\ then enter and it says "invalid drive specification" Howe […]
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NeoG_ wrote on Yesterday, 12:56:

Im from Windows wrote on Yesterday, 12:54:

It gave me the A:\ command
I have type C:\ then enter, then D:\ then enter and it dose not work!

What does that mean? What message is it giving you?

I just reboot it and tried again
At the A:\ command. I type C:\ or E:\ then enter and it says "invalid drive specification"
However I type D:\ then enter key and it changes from A:\ to D:\

It is almost as it will not except any other drive to install from the the D drive

So I have now managed to get my D drive working and get my win98 insulation disk in it. Boot the A drive and this time it has automaticlly gone into win98 insulation

However now it is saying that a non MS-DOS partition is using your entire hard drive and that the entire disk has to be formatted to install win98 (utter ridicules!). There are several partitions on this HDD several of them linux distros and the winxp that I am using now. which must be an ms-dos partition (again utter redicules!)

Im from Windows wrote on Yesterday, 17:15:

Im from Windows wrote on Yesterday, 13:02:

I just reboot it and tried again At the A:\ command. I type C:\ or E:\ then enter and it says "invalid drive specification" Howe […]
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NeoG_ wrote on Yesterday, 12:56:

What does that mean? What message is it giving you?

I just reboot it and tried again
At the A:\ command. I type C:\ or E:\ then enter and it says "invalid drive specification"
However I type D:\ then enter key and it changes from A:\ to D:\

It is almost as it will not except any other drive to install from the the D drive

So I have now managed to get my D drive working and get my win98 insulation disk in it. Boot the A drive and this time it has automaticlly gone into win98 insulation

However now it is saying that a non MS-DOS partition is using your entire hard drive and that the entire disk has to be formatted to install win98 (utter ridicules!). There are several partitions on this HDD several of them linux distros and the winxp that I am using now. which must be an ms-dos partition (again utter redicules!)

Not 'redicules' at all. Linux uses non-MS-DOS filesystems usually. And Windows NT (3.1, 4.0, 2000, XP and newer) all use NTFS, which are all non-MS-DOS filesystems. The only filesystems Windows 9x and MS-DOS recognise is FAT (FAT16 or FAT32 on hard drives). So all it sees is that the partitions on the hard drive are using non-FAT filesystems, thus non-MS-DOS (MS-DOS and Windows 9x don't recognise other filesystems at all). That's why it won't show up as C:\ or any other MS-DOS or 9x drive. Never did and never will (unless you use specific filesystem drivers, which some people have made (unstable though for NTFS or read-only access only). All those operating systems see is a disk with some unknown partition types (it only recognises FAT16 and FAT32 on hard drive partitions. Also only MBR-based (non-MBR won't work at all, so forget about GPT).
Also insulation? Don't you mean installation?

Im from Windows wrote on Yesterday, 17:15:

So I have now managed to get my D drive working and get my win98 insulation disk in it. Boot the A drive and this time it has automaticlly gone into win98 insulation
However now it is saying that a non MS-DOS partition is using your entire hard drive and that the entire disk has to be formatted to install win98 (utter ridicules!). There are several partitions on this HDD several of them linux distros and the winxp that I am using now. which must be an ms-dos partition (again utter redicules!)

Do you have anything FAT on the drive? That's all Win98 recognizes.

If the drive is full, it can't allocate a free partition.

Also, W98 is "over"DOS ... and I do recall some problems with DOS and partitions, things like it had to be the first partition on the drive, had to be under a certain size, could get confused if the drive was too big, only recognized up to 4 partitions ... and lets not forget that the whole underling partition scheme changed at least once along the way - I recall this mainly with old DOS & FAT16 - hopefully much improved in FAT32 ... but it's been so long since I actually setup W98 on hardware (the only W98 I still have is in a virtual machine)...

Hopefully some other participants can advise you better on all of this.

superfury wrote on Yesterday, 19:10:

Im from Windows wrote on Yesterday, 17:15:

Im from Windows wrote on Yesterday, 13:02:

I just reboot it and tried again At the A:\ command. I type C:\ or E:\ then enter and it says "invalid drive specification" Howe […]
Show full quote

I just reboot it and tried again
At the A:\ command. I type C:\ or E:\ then enter and it says "invalid drive specification"
However I type D:\ then enter key and it changes from A:\ to D:\

It is almost as it will not except any other drive to install from the the D drive

So I have now managed to get my D drive working and get my win98 insulation disk in it. Boot the A drive and this time it has automaticlly gone into win98 insulation

However now it is saying that a non MS-DOS partition is using your entire hard drive and that the entire disk has to be formatted to install win98 (utter ridicules!). There are several partitions on this HDD several of them linux distros and the winxp that I am using now. which must be an ms-dos partition (again utter redicules!)

Not 'redicules' at all. Linux uses non-MS-DOS filesystems usually. And Windows NT (3.1, 4.0, 2000, XP and newer) all use NTFS, which are all non-MS-DOS filesystems. The only filesystems Windows 9x and MS-DOS recognise is FAT (FAT16 or FAT32 on hard drives). So all it sees is that the partitions on the hard drive are using non-FAT filesystems, thus non-MS-DOS (MS-DOS and Windows 9x don't recognise other filesystems at all). That's why it won't show up as C:\ or any other MS-DOS or 9x drive. Never did and never will (unless you use specific filesystem drivers, which some people have made (unstable though for NTFS or read-only access only). All those operating systems see is a disk with some unknown partition types (it only recognises FAT16 and FAT32 on hard drive partitions. Also only MBR-based (non-MBR won't work at all, so forget about GPT).
Also insulation? Don't you mean installation?

I think NTFS was the next format type that came out after FAT
So you are saying DOS dose not recognize anything ells other then FAT and will therefor not understand each individual partition on the drive and just label it all as one

DaveDDS wrote on Yesterday, 20:53:

Do you have anything FAT on the drive? That's all Win98 recognizes.

the only thing on the HDD are currupt linux OS and winxp
More then likely winxp will be NFTS format so the answer would be sadly No!

DaveDDS wrote on Yesterday, 20:53:

If the drive is full, it can't allocate a free partition.

I would like to delete these sad and sorry linux partitions if possible with out loosing my winxp

DaveDDS wrote on 2026-07-04, 10:29:

Brief history of floppy disks: (you don't need to know this - but it might help understand where things came from) […]
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Im from Windows wrote on 2026-07-04, 09:21:

... Pass! dont understand any of that

Brief history of floppy disks: (you don't need to know this - but it might help understand where things came from)

-

1st floppies were 8" - these were used on mainframes (size of small house) and minicomputers (size of a refrigerator)
These had 77 "tracks" (logical rings where head writes data)
They were at first single sided, then advancement led to both sides being used.
Originally "single density", later "double density" (twice as many data bits per track)

-

Then came 5.25 - almost the same but smaller and only 40 tracks.
Single sided: 180k
Double sided: 360k (this is where IBM 5150 "PC" started)

-

Then "High Density" was developed (Even more data bits per track via different media and more tracks) - appeared in the PC "AT")
5.25 DSDD = 360k (40 track)
5.25 DSHD = 1.2m (80 track)

An ongoing problem with DD<>HD was that there was no physical difference that the drive could detect and some people formatted DDs as HDs and it "sort of" worked but was unreliable.

-

Then disks got even smaller and physically changed: 3.5" format. By this time all were 80 track.
3.5 DSDD: 720k
3.5 DSHD: 1.4m

At this time an ID hole was added so a drive could tell the different between DD and HD disks, this appearsa on HD disks but NOT on DD disks (easy to tell apart visually as well)
I found a good photo showing the differences here: https://www.micropolis.com/support/kb/3.5-inch-floppy-disk

-

I have included much more information about floppy diskette and drive types in my ImageDisk documentation.
ImageDisk can be gotten from "Daves Old Computers"

I was watching this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TbCj3chP_c and at 2.30min he goes into a little detail on it

Im from Windows wrote on Yesterday, 21:25:

I would like to delete these sad and sorry linux partitions if possible with out loosing my winxp

I don't know if FDISK on the Win98 boot floppy, if not - you could use the MsDOS6.22 image from my DOSBOOT archive.

Mine will boot up on a RamDrive (which will be C: unless it saw another FAT partition on HD as it booted), just use: C:> ZEX A:DOS
which lets you extract files from DOS.ZIP which is on the boot floppy.
- select "FDISK.EXE" to extract it to the RamDrive.

Using FDISK you can delete the "nonDOS" partition (just make sure you delete the right one (*).
I think 6.22 can create a FAT32 partition, but I've not done this stuff for many years, so I'd probably leave empty space and see if Win98 Installer can create it's own partition in that free space.

(*) I don't know if 6.22s FDISK can recognize XPs NTFS partition - it might also show as NonDOS.
If XP is running, you coud probably use it's tools to delete the partition instead (might be safer if you're not sure which is which)
You might also be able to use XPs tools to create a FAT32 if W98 installer gets confused about it.

Im from Windows wrote on Yesterday, 21:29:

... I was watching this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TbCj3chP_c and at 2.30min he goes into a little detail on it

I see it's about MACs ... Just be aware that Apple floppies use a different mostly proprietary low level format (IIRC they called it GCR - but that might be Apple][), which is completely unlike the more standard FM/MFM used in the PC (and almost all other systems).

... so I might not "trust" things that are mentioned (if you're not familiar with floppy disk types) ...