I have spent all MORNING on a problem, and I am at my wits end!

The morning started, I wanted to downgrade XP to 98 so I reformatted my drive and lost XP

So then I tried to SETUP WIN98, i can begin the setup for WIN98, but it says first that it wants to do a system check, and when it does the system check it says WINDOWS SETUP REQUIRES 74XXXX BYTES

Then the computer freezes (often it will freeze before it even outputs this sentence) and I am screwed!!!

Any ideas? My C: drive says on FDISK that it is the MSDOS Primary Partition and has 14 gigs of free space!

Any help will be VASSSSSSTLY appreciated Was XP set up on FAT32 or NTFS? Did you delete the old partitions with fdisk and make new ones and did you Enable Large Drive support when using fdisk?

This bootdisk has the Delpart program on it in CASE the old partitions prove difficult to delete:

DELPART BOOTDISK

What makes you want to go back to '98 if I might ask?

Thank you for such a clear response, I'll try to answer as well as I can

XP Was set up on NTFS, I reinstalled XP then to be on FAT32.

I deleted the old partritions, and set up a new one with Large Drive support on.

I am going back to '98 because I just like it better, for what I need the computer to be doing (I am setting it up for a 'recording studio')
Maybe a read error somewhere. Have you tried re-seating the RAM modules. How much RAM does the system have?

RAM Knowledge Base
RAM And What it Does
RAM Virtual Memory Paging
RAM Reseating & Fitting PDF File
When you had finished formatting did you run scandisk and do a surface check? If not try the drive manufacturer's drive diagnostic diskette and test the drive and use a RAM diagnostic diskette to test the RAM.Steve Benjamins........Did you format the drive first ?

I'm curious to know what win 98 does better than win xp ...other than freeze up .......and flash up ........"you have preformed an illegal operation "


let us know

dl65  The system has 256 Megs of RAM. How would I go about re-seating the RAM modules?

Yes I formatted the drive first, and I tried to do Scandisk on Drive C: but it says it can't run scandisk on c:

So to clarify better what has happened, is I have formatted c: and now I can't install anything

I have none of the manufacturers drivers with me anymore this is a bit of an older computer and my dad (who doesnt know enough about CPU's) threw them out some time ago.

Is there a way I can download a RAM diagnostic diskette? Cause I think that might clue me in on the problem.

Thanks for the help so far
SOMETHING is wrong if you can't run scandisk.

Have you checked in the fdisk program if the drive is set A for Active?

FDISK SIMULATIONBTW, XP will run better with 512 Mb or more RAM.

RAM Reseating & Fitting PDF FileYa the drive is set as Activeload the win98 boot floppy at the A:\> SYS C:
http://www.bootdisk.com/  now format c: and fdisk and then start win98 with the cdrom support disk....

and you have MAY life hard for your self>http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q303661/ Quote

Ya the drive is set as Active