Harddrive Error During Win2k / Win98SE Install

[drakster]

I know this isn't exactly a linux question. But it's indirectly related. I wanted to clean install everything with Win2K first. Then I'll be putting MD8 back on. However...

Okay, got and installed a new Western Digital 30G Harddrive. Attempted a clean install of Windows 2000, and got an error saying it couldn't install bootloader and setup could not continue. Tried Windows98SE and at the beginning of install, where it should have run scandisk, it said something like "This version of scandisk is compatible with msdos version blahblahblah, then something about a disk compression utility that was installed on my harddrive. To my knowledge, there's NOTHING installed on my harddrive. I've lowlevel formatted, fdisked, formatted, etc.etc. and nothing changes. I'm pretty sure whatever disk compression utility it's talking about is the same thing causing the error with Win2K. Any ideas what this is and how to fix it? Any help would be greatly appreciated. TIA.

P.S., The harddrive is ultraATA100, the bios found and detected it by itself. (By that I mean I didn't have to use the EZBIOS that came with it.)

[bdg1983]

Run the dos fdisk and see if there is a 10MB or so partition at the end of the drive. It could be one of the EZ programs that WD installs on their drives.

The reason being is I had a similar problem a couple of weeks ago while rebuilding a few PC's for a friend. Couldn't get Partition Magic to work as it detected a 3rd party program on the drive. Think it was a Western Digital drive.

I've been so busy lately that I cannot remember exactly what I did to remove it. Start by going to WD's website and searching around for the HD software they include. The link will take you to another site that supplies the software. Somewhere in there or in their forums will tell you how to access the software either by key combination or the specific boot disk. There is also instructions on how to remove the EZ software. Another way I guess would be to just use fdisk and delete the 10MB partition.

I think it was a WD drive and not Quantum.

Hope this helps.

[drakster]

Hey, thanks for the reply. I ran Partition Magic on the drive at one point, and did not see a seperate partition. It's all formatted into one large partition. Also, at one point, using the software from WD's webpage, I did a lowlevel format. So I'm assuming any and everything that might have been on that drive is long gone. Including any hidden partitions.

I was wondering, though... would the cluster size be causing the false read on the install? Maybe if it was a different size than the install expected, that would cause it to spew out the errors.
I'm sure that's probably a load of nonsense, but I'm grasping at straws here.

Thanks again for the idea mdwatts. :)

[drakster]

Okay, got the problem figured out... FINALLY. I found, after some major digging, something on Western Digital's webpage regarding Win2K and UltraATA100 drives. They don't like each other. So I had to disable the UDMA support in my bios, which was easier said than done, but I got it handled. Win2K installed, and I'm currently downloading SP2 which is supposed to fix the UDMA support. Wish me luck, and hopefully by tonight, I'll have linux reinstalled!!!