format a hard drive to DOS that has been formated in NTFS

[eyedock65]

I fromated it back in Dos using Fdisk and then format.
both my XP pro and Win98 will see it as a slave drive but neither of them will see it as a Master drive.
If i boot with a startup Win98 floppy it tells me that "can't find FAT. this disk has been fromated with a third part program."

I want to ues it as master drive on XP pro, but with in run the startup CD of XP pro it can not findd the drive c:

Any one got any suggestions????

eyedock65@yahoo.com

 

[edfair]

What does fdisk report of the file system on the drive now?
If 3rd party filesystem it should report non-dos.
I'm not sure about XP with native NTFS on the boot drive, but 98 should see it with any FAT. And the 98 boot floppy should be able to see it.
3rd parties also modify the MBR so you might want to use the undocumented fdisk /mbr on the drive sitting as master on the primary channel to overwrite anything that might be lying there screwing things up. Then fdisk and clean the partition table and try again for a primary partition.


Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[Nytro]

eyedock65

You will need to delete the NTFS partition by way of the XP disk not with a DOS boot disk. Upon startup of the computer go into your BIOS/CMOS and set your 1st bootup device as the CDROM drive. Before saving and exiting the BIOS/CMOS insert the XP disk. Follow the onscreen instructions... this will get you to the point where you can delete the NTFS partition, make sure the drive shows up as "unallocated" restart the computer with the DOS boot disk this will allow you to run "fdisk" and format the partition "FAT-16 or 32".

Hope this helps...

Nytro