What is wrong with my hard drive What do i need to do?

Question

ok I want to use windows 98 instead of xp for me 98 works alot better, anyway heres the problem , I have a 35 gb hard drive and for awhile I did use 98 Then one day I decided to re format and when i finished it was saying my hard drive is only 1.99 gb I have never had this issue. and so I found out i couldnt install anything with 98 then i am forced to use xp because xp gives me a virtual hard drive that is the size of the hard drive i have in my computer my virtual hard drive is 35 gbs which my actual har drive is that large i was using 98 with a 35 gb hard drive many times before same hard drive and one day i reformatted and it screwed up whats wrong how do i fix it.

i want 98 because some of my good lookin games such as republic commando intense graphics lagged and was unplayable on xp and on 98 it actually works smoothly so i realized this xp is eating up my cpu power and i hate xp.

Answer 1

1. Windows 98 is deprecated/ obsolete and i believe so is your Hard drive!

2. Microsoft has stopped all support for Win98

Answer 2

When you installed Windows 98, you accidently created the wrong size partition. While Windows 98 is somewhat limited, you can use a so-called FAT32 to gain access to drives that are 32GB in size.

Instead of starting over, you might consider getting Partition Magic or Partition Commander to resize that partition.
http://www.symantec.com/home_homeoffice/products/overview.jsp?pcid=sp&pvid=pm80
http://www.v-com.com/product/System_Commander_Home.html

You can also try one for FREE at http://www.download.com/
Try CompuApps SwissKnife V3 3.22

Yes, if you have only 128MB of RAM, your computer can't do Windows XP very well. Windows 2000 might be a better choice if you want to have an NTFS file system and access to drives that are larger than 32GB.

You see, with Windows 2000, 128MB of RAM will work and 256 would be better. With Windows XP, 128MB of RAM barely works, and 512MB would be acceptable. But Windows 98 works just fine with 64MB of RAM or more.

Good luck and Happy Computing!

Answer 3

Sounds like the drive was formatted in FAT16, which would gives you a max partition size of 2GB

I would format again using the fdisk function available on win98 boot floppy and selecting large disk support so it uses FAT32 the instructions are below. This should gain all your hard drive space back then just run the setup 98cd.
I am unaware of any way to do it without formatting again.
http://www.onecomputerguy.com/install/fdisk.htm

Answer 4

You say you have only 35G RAM - below are the minimum requirements for XP. I will also include the WindowsXP advisor which I think you should have run before installing it. I ran it on my Pentium III and was told I could not install XP.

Minimum:
233 MHz CPU *
64 MB of RAM (may limit performance and some features) *
1.5 GB of available hard disk space *
Super VGA (800 x 600) or higher-resolution video adapter and monitor
CD-ROM or DVD drive
Keyboard and Microsoft Mouse or compatible pointing device


Windows XP Upgrade Advisor
Check your hard drive to see if it will tolerate WinXP
If your current version of Windows is eligible for upgrade to Windows XP, you can use Upgrade Advisor to make sure your hardware and software are compatible with Windows XP.
Note You may use Upgrade Advisor to check for upgrade eligibility and compatibility information for Windows XP Home Edition with the following exception: It is not possible to upgrade from Windows NT® 4.0 or Windows 2000 Professional to Windows XP Home Edition
Go to this link.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/home/upgrading/advisor.mspx
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I'm sorry to say it looks like you will have to reinstall 98 or upgrade your computer. I bought a new one. Watch for sales in your weekly Sunday paper. I got a Dell 3000 for $299 and it is great.

Answer 5

hi,
did you format it to fat32 ?, 98 cannot read ntfs (how it would be formated if you used xp)

Answer 6

It depends on how you formated the drive. I believe you chose "FAT 16" which is only capable of 2GB's of storage.