I have a friend who has ME, and the operating system is totally corrupted, tried everything won't give it any more of my time. However she lost all of her original restore CD's that came with the computer. I happen to have a complete copy of Win98SE and told her I'd reload it in place of her ME. Then after that, I suggested that she upgrade to XP w/SP2.

It's been a while since I reformatted a harddrive, and since I'm going from ME to 98SE.....?

What's the process? Won't I need a boot floppy disk?

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I am felling lazy this morning and can't be botherd typing :D so if you go to the link below that will show you how to FDISK and format a HDD. (The page has graphics for easier understanding)
http://www.perfectdrivers.com/howto/fdisk-format.html

If you are unsure as to how you install the OS get back and let us know.

Better to get a copy of the HDD manufacturers' utilities on a floppy and use that. It's so much simpler and it will partition, format [and if necessary add Dynamic Drive Overlay software] all in one go.
Make more than one partition [say C: D: E:], keep C: as small as possible [3Gb should do, 2GB if short], and keep only "Windows" and "Program Files" [plus odds and bods] on there.
Make the last partition about 10%-20% of the total HDD capacity [to keep backups and the Windows installation files etc].
Use the default cluster sizes.

When that's done, reboot from a Win98 startup disk "With CD-ROM support" and use the following commands to make a directory [on E: say], copy the installation files to there, run "Setup.exe" from there, then leave the files there permanently. Whenever Windows needs a file it will fetch it instantly from there without asking for the Windows CD to be put into a CD-drive with a letter that no CD-drive may have any longer! That can cause problems.

Change the following to suit your setup:


a:\>[B]e:

e:>md_win98se [replace _ with a space]

e:>cd_win98se

e:\win98se>copy_g:\win98se\*.*
[if c,d,e are HDD partitions, f is the RAMdrive, and g is the master CD-drive, and the files are in the ?"Win98SE"? folder.]
You should see a long list of files displayed on screen as they are copied over.

e:\win98se>setup
Windows setup should begin.