Problems installing a secondary drive

[KiwiMerv]

Machine: 6-year-old Pentium P3-667mhz running Windows 98.
Drive C: 13.2GB Drive D: 4GB.
Two years ago I installed the 4GB secondary drive without a problem. Software installed on it has performed faultlessly. Recently I wanted to install additional software which needed 8GB of drive space which I didn't have. I made enquiries about a larger drive to replace the 4GB one - smallest available 80GB - supplier sceptical whether my system would accept a 80GB drive. He offered instead a used Seagate 40GB which I installed using the BIOS auto detect option. Set it up with a single partition and formatted it. Installed no problem, but after I loaded the software I began to get "program has performed an illegal operation" messages, with details: "invalid page fault". Tried setting the drive jumper to limit the drive to 32GB, BIOS correctly identified the drive as 32GB, reinstalled everything, same problems began again. Various programs, ones that had never given a problem, began coming up with illegal operation messages, always "invalid page fault".
Uninstalled everything and reinstalled the previous 4GB drive. All programs performed faultlessly. I then had a software engineer reinstall the 40GB drive using the Seagate utilities instead of the BIOS auto detect. Same thing - various programs produced illegal operation messages. System would 'hang' at any time, even when trying to load a WORD document by clicking on the file name. Had to switch off and reboot numerous times. Scandisk would report finding files with an excessively long file name. Received 'File missing' messages in various programs. Some files had 'junk' in fields which normally were space-filled. Problems kept compounding. Used Cntl/Alt/Del scores of times to see what was running and selected 'End Task' to eliminate them one by one, to no avail.
Next I located a near new 10GB drive and installed that. Same thing - problem after problem.
Uninstalled everything, reinstalled the original 4GB drive, reloaded software, including the one requiring 8GB (after deleting unwanted stuff to make space). Everything is back to normal - not a single "illegal operation" since. I would still like to install a larger secondary drive.
Come on you experts out there - what was happening to my system?
Kiwi Merv

[Sylvander]

Not sure if I follow all the detail, but...

"Drive C: 13.2GB Drive D: 4GB...I installed the 4GB secondary drive without a problem. Software installed on it has performed faultlessly"
1. If you installed PROGRAMS to D: then those programs and their addresses are registered in the registry on C: and MUST remain at those addresses to work.
If you replace the physical HDD given the letter D: with a new HDD, then after installation that must have the letter D: and all the old programs' files must be on that at exactly the same addresses, or the programs won't work.

2. If you want to have more HDD space , the best thing to do is to fit a [LOW COST] PCI to IDE controller card [do you have a PCI slot free?]
This means that only the Windows OS used would limit the size of the HDD you can use = 120 GB for Win98 [the size is practically unlimited for the controller card, and it's faster too. I fitted a new ATA133 HDD to the ATA133 card and noticed increased speed].
This avoids the problem of getting the drive to misreport its size and/or installing a "Dynamic Drive Overlay" [DDO].
You did the 1st using the hardware jumper [I did it using software MaxBlast4, which can be undone] = "the drive jumper to limit the drive to 32GB"; but has the 2nd been done = "I then had a software engineer reinstall the 40GB drive using the Seagate utilities"?
If so, it's now so convoluted that it's like "Undoing the Gordion Knot".
What I did [if I remember right] was to backup C: with a non-imaging program that only backs up folders and files [HP "Simple Backup"]; zero-filled my drive [to eliminate the DDO]; reset the drive to correctly report its "Native Capacity" [using the same software (MaxBlast4) as made it misreport]; switched from the internal IDE controller to the new card; and restored the backup of C:
[B]See it HERE (http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?t=40598).

3. If you had no D: drive/partition you could just [connect both old & new HDD's to the new card and] clone your existing [Primary Master] C: drive [after eliminating size misreporting and DDO] to the new [Primary Slave] HDD, then swap jumpers and connection locations to make the old Primary slave and the new Primary Master, and the BIOS would boot from the new rather than the old.
You could then repartition and/or reformat the old and either remove it or leave it in place.

4. But you have the complication of this D: drive.
It would simplify matters if you could eliminate the need for this before attempting to fit a new bigger HDD as in 3 above.
Enough for now. :)

[KiwiMerv]

Thanks Sylvander for your comprehensive reply. Firstly, let me assure you that I was careful to Uninstall the software on drive D: before changing the drive. (There was only one program on it - Flight Simulator 2004 which occupied most of it.) As soon as I put my old drive back everything returned to normal, but if I uninstalled then tried again with a larger drive the errors began again. Even programs located on C: were affected, such as the WORD document sitting on the desktop. (The system would just 'hang' if I clicked on it.) I must have tried installing the new drive/s four or five times before I gave up and left the old drive on. I've had no further problems since. Click on the same WORD document and it loads every time.
I will study your suggested solution further and let you know if I proceed with it.

[david eaton]

6-year-old Pentium P3-667mhz running Windows 98.
My first thought is the battery. With a computer that old, the BIOS battery (coin cell) is probably dead or dying. Easy to replace, usually a CR2032 cell, obtainable everywhere. Worth trying anyway.