Hard Drive formating- what am I doing wrong?

[smaxted]

I have the problems with my machine, help would be greatly appreciated.
1)I have installed a 18.2 gb hard drive in a p2 300mhz machine, i put a ME start-up disk in so I can get into dos to format. But when the computer boots, it just checks the floppy and goes right into windows. It won't let me format!
2)when I boot up after shutting the computer down, the bios keeps giving me an error and it doesn't seem to be accepting the bios changes. Scotty Mac a.k.a smaxted

"Another day, another problem"

 

[edfair]

Sounds like boot order is set c: a:, but it can be a bad floppy.
Failure to hold is generally a weak or bad battery. Ed Fair
unixstuff@juno.com
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[smaxted]

Ok, maybe im trying to reformat wrong, just to make sure could someone post step by step instructions on how to reformat Scotty Mac a.k.a smaxted

"Another day, another problem"

 

[edfair]

Boot to floppy.
format c:

This is the answer to the question. Depending on what boot disk you are using and how you are re-installing you might not need to do it.

Usual step is to boot with CD support, move to the CD and run setup, which includes the fdisk, format, and load.

Your original question indicates that the system moves directly to windows. Is this an indication that you put the drive in as an additional drive? This would change the instructions.
Ed Fair
unixstuff@juno.com
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[Tragdor]

If you are using two HDDs, why not just format it through Windows? Start Explorer and right click on the new drive and select format.