Cant install windows 98

[bazil]

I have a 586 (pentium 1) i want to install windows 98 on it. It had no os when i brought it (2nd hand). I plugged a working cd drive into it, then turned it on. I used a windows 98 boot disk from bootdisk.com and it said i needed to use fdisk to make partitions or something. when i try to it says there is no fixed disk, even though it diagnoses it a hdd on startup of the computer. Also the computer dosen't reconize it has a cd drive, nor can i find a boot disk that has drivers approprite for the CD drive. im not very good with dos, so anyhelp would be very useful. How can i put any graphical operating system on there?

[maartenvr]

You should not need any drivers for the CD drive. You plug it in and you want to make sure it is setup properly. Then yoy should be able to boot from it or access it using a boot floppy and selecting boot with CD-ROM support....

[tetonbob]

Check the jumpers on the HD - you want Master configuration.

Ensure that all cable connections are secure. Check the BIOS boot order, make sure that your HD is there. Should be something like A, C, CD ROM.

Perhaps the IDE cable is bad.

A Win98 bootdisk from www.bootdisk.com has generic CD ROM support built in. Watch the screen as it goes through it's loadup, it will tell you the drive letter being assigned to your CD ROM.

[bazil]

When I use the boot disk (with the win 98 cd) it says "Drive c does not contain a valid fat ot fat32 patition" and to run fdisk. I tried to run Fdisk then it said "there are no fixed disk present". It knows theres something there becasue it "succesfull loads diagnostic tools onto drive c:" It also has this to say:
Device driver not found: 'MSCD001'
No valid CDROM device drivers selected
Then it comes up with the prompt
A:\>

[jdc2000]

From the errors you are getting, it looks like the jumpers for the hard drive and CD-ROM drive are conflicting. If both drives are on the same cable, you need to set the jumpers on the hard drive to Master, with Slave, and the jumpers on the CD-ROM drive to Slave. If the drives are on separate IDE cables, then both should be set to Master (no Slave).

[bazil]

I dont think the hdd has a master with slave setting. It has a slave setting, a master setting, and a single setting. Neverless i set it to all three, along with the CD drive and it said all were wrong. when it tried to install the CD drivers it said "No drives found, aborting installation" It then progressed to the point where it told me it has no partition and to run F disk. I ran fdisk, and it said "No fixed disk present". I unplugged the CD compleatly and set the junper to single on the hdd and tried "start the computer without CD support" It done exactly the same thing, and told me that there were no fixed disks present once i tried to partition. Its strange, It acts as though there is a HDD until I try to partiton it. It compleatly ignores the CD drive at every stage, hmmmmm
:hmm:

[jdc2000]

Things to check (besides jumper settings):

Make sure that the stripe on the IDE cable (pin 1) goes to the correct side of the connections on the drives and on the motherboard. There should be an indicator on the drives and on the motherboard connector to show where pin 1 is, although they can sometimes be hard to see.

Try another IDE cable.

If those fail, I would suggest trying the hard drive in another PC to see if it is recognized and can be accessed. It is possible that one or both IDE channels on your motherboard are bad.

[gundamhybrid]

When I use the boot disk (with the win 98 cd) it says "Drive c does not contain a valid fat ot fat32 patition" and to run fdisk. I tried to run Fdisk then it said "there are no fixed disk present". It knows theres something there becasue it "succesfull loads diagnostic tools onto drive c:" It also has this to say:
Device driver not found: 'MSCD001'
No valid CDROM device drivers selected
Then it comes up with the prompt
A:\>
hi bazil
maybe this can help(ing) u ...
lets back again to this (up) message, yea ...
about ... Device driver not found: 'MSCD001'
hmm ... are u booting from floopy or cd? if ... from floopy make sure they're (booting disket) really disk boot not the "system" disk
did the cdrom are detected by u'r computer or by BIOS?

about ... Drive c does not contain a valid fat ot fat32 patition
did the BIOS has detect the harddisk? if he (BIOS) did, how much the capacities of the harddisk?
if BIOS has detected the right HD and right capacities, ... maybe the system before using fat16 or fat12 (win95), u must erase (fix) this system before

good luck

[smurfy]

Hi Bazil, welcome to CTH.
it says there is no fixed disk, even though it diagnoses it a hdd on startup of the computer.
At the moment, your bootdisk is telling you that it can't see anything connected to the IDE cable.
It is possible the BIOS (BasicInputOutputSystem) of this PC has been told it has a certain type of Hard Disk that is no longer there.
As the system boots up and you see the diagnostic messages (memory test, Hard disk details) you should see mention of what key press will get you into "setup" or "CMOS".
Push that and see if you can find an option to auto-detect hard disks. This will force a refresh of the BIOS and make it try to find the Primary master hard drive and the CD Rom which if connected to the same cable will be the Primary slave.

Please post back with an update.