hard drive

There may be a partition on that hard disk where a boot utility may reside.

Make a boot floppy and put fdisk on it. Fdisk is a utility that you can find on any Windows 9x PC in the Windows\command folder, or you can get it off the Microsoft "Windows 98 Startup" floppy (you will need to extract it from the EBD.CAB file).

Fdisk will show you if there is any partitions on your hard disk. You can remove them and then re-partition the disk. You will have to format the drive again if you do this.

Be sure to read about fdisk in Microsoft's online knowledge base (support.microsoft.com) before you use it, if you are unfamiliar with it.

Fdisk has an option to remove nondos partitions try that. If that dont work down load delpart from MS it is a utility that will remove those hard to remove partitions. I have used this a few times and its a great way to start over on a used hard drive. Of course you will have to repartition and format the drive after you use it.

Getting rid of a DoubleSpaced\DriveSpace3 ( compressed ) drive ,
when you are trying to Format .
Boot from your floppy with Fdisk & Format on .
Run Fdisk. You see a menu of tasks. Remove your primary partition.
This could be tricky if you have two or more partitions. If so,
remove the partitions in this order:
Remove all logical partitions first;
Remove extended partition;
Finally remove primary partition;
Create a new primary partition;
Exit Fdisk and reboot with the floppy still in.
Run format with the following switch: format c: /u/c/s
The /u means unconditional format.
That's it. You'll be left with a clean hard drive.

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