Hard Drive

Not necessarily. This could be casued by a number of issues including heat or memory errors or ...

I would try the following:

1. Reseat the memory and processor by removing it and then cleaning the socket with compressed air before reinstalling. This is certainly true of the Slot A processors such as the PII and some early PIII processors.
2. Reseat all cards in their slots the same way.
3. Check all of the fans to ensure that they are working properly and are clear of dust and debris.
4. Clean all vents so that there is adequate air flow.

If the problem persists after that you might try replacing the memory or having it tested to see if there are any problems. Best of luck.

Good advice from Dennis above.

Assume you repartitioned and formatted drive with no errors or stalling during format. Stalling at a particular completition stage while formatting indicates bad sectors on drive.

However, don't overlook the video card and/or it's driver. A faulty video driver or faulty video card can cause the symptoms you describe.

First try downloading and installing most current video driver for your card/adapter.

Also can try swapping out card with a known good one or install a PCI card if it is integrated into motherboard.

Dalton

Good advice so far.

While not impossible, I doubt it is the hard drive.

There is a acknowledged problem with some Fujitsu hard drives that does create a persistent error.
However, on the ones I have seen, they just forget that you have installed any software on them.

A known Windows 98 bug exists if you have more than 511MB of RAM installed. If this is the case, there is a work-around if you edit one of the system files.

1 big issue I have run into on several PCs with W98 is that IE 6 and DirectX 8 and 9 are often incompatible with older video cards.

If the read me or release notes for the video driver do not include that the driver supports DirectX 8, do NOT install IE6.
Nor, should you ever install a newer version of DirectX than is supported by your video driver.

If your motherboard has a VIA chip-set on it, using the latest driver can result in an unstable system.
VIA has a link to an older chip-set driver that is reported to be more stable on W98.

I have also found that W98 plays better if you install your plug-in cards 1 at a time.

Post a comment listing your hardware. That might help us identify a specific problem for you.

Chas

Fdisk is not the format command, did you format/s (creates a bootable dos format)c:? After FDISK ? On some systems there is a jumper change that has to be made to allow formatting of C drive (really shows my age).

Did you format/v/s (verify and add the DOS operating system file) ? Actual options may be different, however "format/?" will give you all the different formating options.