This procedure is based on your existing HDD (Hard Disk Drive) using ‘C’ Drive. If your have a partitioned HDD or more than one HDD, drive letters are allocated after C:. Eg D:, E: etc. If you have a CD-ROM, it is automatically allocated the next drive letter after the highest partition on your HDD. During this procedure, the CD-ROM may change to different drive letters, as it is allocated automatically, so do not worry if it changes.
Note:This procedure will erase everything on your HDD, so you should make sure you have already backed up, or taken copies of all of your important documents. You should also make sure you have your Operating System CD (ie Windows 95 or Windows 98) and all of your original program disks (Eg Office 95/97/2000, Word, Excel, Works etc).
1)
If you don’t already have a
Windows Startup Disk, you should make one now. This is done as follows:
Put a blank Floppy into the ‘A’ drive, and click the following:
Start | Settings | Control Panel |
Add/Remove Programs | Startup Disk | Create Disk
and follow the prompts.
2) Boot up the system on the Windows Startup Disk. This will boot up to a menu with the options of “with CD-ROM support” and “without CD-ROM support”. Choose the option “with CD-ROM support” and you will get a DOS Prompt. (C:\>). At this point, you should check if you can use the CD-ROM. Put a CD in, and type E: and Enter, and see if the system recognises the CD-ROM drive. If not, and you don’t have the original CD-ROM drivers, then you should abort this process. If you can see the E: drive, you should be able to type DIR and see a list of files. If so then continue.
3) Type FDISK and press the Enter key. You may be prompted with a message asking if you want to enable large disk support. Choose yes if you have Windows 98. This simply means that new partitions can be created in the larger format. It does not change any current setting or disk. After this, you will be presented with the FDISK menu. It looks like the following, and has a range of options:
Current fixed disk drive: 1
Choose one of the following:
1. Create DOS partition or
2. Set active partition
3. Delete partition or
4. Display partition information
5. Change current fixed disk drive
Enter choice: [1]
Choose [4] to look at the current partition settings without changing anything. Take note of which partitions are Primary and which are Extended. (Type is PRI DOS or EXT DOS). Also note, Extended drives have Logical drives in the extended DOS partitions. This means that if it is the Primary DOS partition of a HDD, then the drive letter is assigned by the system Eg C:. But if it is an extended DOS partition (any partition that is not the primary), then the drive letters are added or removed by using FDISK, and are referred to as Logical Drives.
Note: You will only have Option [5] if you have more than one HDD.
If you need to delete any extended partitions, follow
these steps:
i) Choose [3] and press Enter to get to the delete screen.
ii) Choose [3] and press Enter to delete logical drives. You will be shown them here.
iii) Enter the drive letter to be removed and press Enter.
iv) Type in the Volume Label and press Enter.
v) Type Y and press Enter to proceed.
vi) Press Esc twice to get back to the Fdisk menu.
That removed the logical drive. The next step is to
remove the partition:
vii) Choose [3] and press Enter to get to the delete screen.
viii) Choose [2] and press Enter to delete an extended partition.
ix) Type Y and Enter to proceed with the delete operation.
x) Press Esc to get back to the Fdisk menu.
xi) Press Esc to exit from Fdisk.
Note:you may be prompted with a message that FDISK is attempting to write to the boot sector. Stop/Continue/Cancel. If so, choose Continue. Then you will be prompted to Restart the system to get the changes fully implemented. Ctrl-Alt-Del to do this.
If you need to delete the primary partition, follow
these steps:
i) Choose [3] and press Enter to get to the delete screen.
ii) Choose [1] and press Enter to delete the Primary partition.
iii) Choose [1] and press Enter to delete.
iv) Type in the Volume Label and press Enter.
v) Type Y and press Enter to proceed.
vi) Press Esc to get back to the Fdisk menu.
vii) Press Esc to exit from Fdisk.
If you need to create a Primary DOS partition, follow
these steps:
i) Choose [1] and press Enter to get to DOS creation screen.
ii) Choose [1] and press Enter to create Primary DOS.
iii) Choose [Y] and press Enter to use maximum space or [N] to enable you to specify a part of the disk for this partition. (If you choose [N] then you will need to enter the amount or percentage).
iv) Press Esc three times to get back to DOS, and then restart the system with Ctrl-Alt-Del.
After
Rebooting, you are ready to format any new partitions (Primary or Extended) on
the HDD.
2)
To format the Primary DOS HDD Type
FORMAT C: /S
and wait for formatting to finish.
3) Remove Windows Startup Disk, and Reboot on ‘C:’ Drive.
4) If CD-ROM was not able to be recognised under DOS Prompt in Step 2, then load the CD-ROM drivers now.
5) Insert Windows 98 CD, and Type D:\Setup.exe. The Windows software will guide you through the mostly automated Windows 98 installation process.
6) From here, you can proceed and load all of your original software programs and disks.
7) Run the Defragmentation, as a software installation can leave the new HDD quite fragmented.