IDE CONTROLLERS

This is definitely odd behavior that the HD would be read as a network drive and that your cdrom doesn't show; what's more strange is that everything appears fine when you use the 3 gig drive.

I'd suggest these steps:

1) First before you drive yourself further up a wall -- try the 40 gig with a totally different computer as you suggested you were thinking of doing. If it acts in a similar fashion then you know its the drive and not anything else. In this case your solution is easy return the drive, get a new one.

2) If the same problems happen on the different computer, I'd check out the bios on the motherboard of the original computer (the one with the Jetway board -- btw I never heard of them..lol). I'm thinking its possible you could just have a way outdated bios that has an issue dealing with the particular model/make of drive you have. While I never had this experience with a HDD there were times a video card I had didn't work until I updated the motherboard bios.

3) Are you sure yourself or someone else didn't change the bios settings from the original factory set default settings? It depends how robust your bios options are but in most (if not all) modern bios menus these days you have the ability to select the block addressing scheme and even the PIO level sometimes. But using factory settings you ensure the most generic settings are being used (the most generic settings support the widest array of commonly used hardware).

All you need to do is install the drivers for the motherboard in my opinion, hence the yellow dots. This might be easier said than done if they are on a cd and you cant see the cd in windows though! Either boot from floppy and copy em onto the hdd from the comand prompt. Or download em of course.

I dont know if this has the right ones for you board as you dont mention the model..... http://www.j-mark.com/dl/dl.html

Look under motherboard driver in the ide column and chipset driver ide - both are down towards the end.

While you've got HDD hooked up to another PC, scan it for virii.

May want to investigate BIOS updates for mobo and see what problems they fix. Wouldn't hurt to go ahead and flash BIOS anyway.

Mobo is definitely new enough that it should easily recognize and handle a 40GB HDD.

Are you installing Win 98SE? 98SE is much preferable to 98. But either one is subject to file corruption. What apps is user running? Music downloads or porno site access?

Any way to install 2000 pro? Much more stable OS and will run well on 850 Cellie with 128MB RAM.

I'm just thinking as I go here. You really have a strange one. Real head scratcher is why 3GB drive works OK and 40GB doesn't.

Dalton

I am thinking it could be mother board driver problem but although i am not familiar with this brand of MB i would not be surprised if originally the system had a hidden partition on it and this is where the drivers are ( just like Compaq) if this is the case it is not as simple as just installing them , in fact you would need to flash the bios with the manufacturers software.

Like I said it is just a thought.
If you post back with more specific MB specs, ( model, version etc.) If you go to the folowing url and enter the details you may come up with a model number, keep in mind it is only successful if your board is listed in thier database, but it is worth a try.
http://www.motherboards.org/tools/moboidtools.html

Since the Motherboard was made after windows 98 came out, sounds like you do need to install the chipset drivers as was mentioned.

Before you attempt booting back to the desktop try the old school way to make Windows recognize that there's a CDROM in the system.

You can use CONFIG.SYS & AUTOEXEC.BAT to load IDE-CD.SYS & MSCDEX.EXE commands for the CDROM. Once you do this and start Windows it will be running in Protected Mode. After rebooting the drivers won't need to loaded from DOS and will be changed to remarks.

REM By Windows Setup A:\MSCDEX /D:NCI000 /V

To use the DOS driver again just delete the words in front of the actual command.

To disable the DOS driver from CONFIG.SYS put the character ; in front of the line for the CDROM to make it a remark.

You can use the IDE-CD.SYS file and duplicate command lines from the boot floppy. To get the command lines needed just look in CONFIG.SYS & AUTOEXEC.BAT on your boot floppy by editing them in DOS. Type the same command lines into the C: drive's CONFIG.SYS & AUTOEXEC.BAT, then change the path to match the hard drive instead of the floppy disk.

For CONFIG.SYS-
DEVICE=C:\IDE-CD.SYS /D:NCI000

AUTOEXEC.BAT-
C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\MSCDEX.EXE /D:NCI000 /V

Then copy the IDE-CD.SYS file from A: drive to the root of the C:

I know alot has been said here but there is one thing to keep in mind..

When you see a yellow exclamation point on a device it mean there is conflicting device attempting to use the same interrupt, memory address etc..

Are you settings in the bios set correctly, typically auto is good, some older bios force you to choose the hard drive type.. lba, auto, chs etc..

It sounds to me like your motherboard firmware does not work with your drive firmware.. Hence the error..

Were you always using the full partition for the 98 load this time and the time it worked fine? Also were you using the same install cd for both installation attempts? Bad cd maybe, hey it happens.

Anyway I wish you luck and will monitor any follow ups..

Good luck

Thanks for all the comments. In device manager says no conflicts, and also remember that this 40gig was installed onto this computer 2 months ago with no problems??? I have'nt had a chance to do much more as have others to work on but a couple of other weird things have happened with this hard drive. You are probably going to think I am crazy but realy happening. I attach hard drive to my computer as a mass storage USB drive. and my WinXP (fat32) reads the partitions all different. It is as if there are hidden partitions, it is a 40gig and okay you do loose part of that but two partitions only come up with 18.6 approx on each partition. That leaves about 3 1/2 ?? When attached to my computer I copied the whole drivers disc onto it. But the win98 folders could not be seen, put it back on the original computer and win98 comes up but the drivers folders I copied could not be found. Definately there before I removed the drive. If I make it one partition my computer sees TWO 18.6 partitions. If I make two partitons, then on my computer it only sees one 18.6 partition??? My computer is reading different partitions to the original computer. Now to this Explorer Exe. errors this can be a virus I have been told but is it strong enough to destroy partitions or to make hidden ones????
Sorry but I am not crazy but it is making me that way. Thanks again

I think that diskaus has the right idea. If you are seeing different things on 2 different computers, I think that you have to determine if the hard drive has a problem (physical or file sytem). Seagate does have an excellent diagnostic disk that you can download for free. If it tells you that the hard drive is good, do the low level format (Seagate may call it "writing all zeros").

There still remains the fact that the computer did the same with the 20 HD earlier. ??