win98 boot problems

[steelersfan0086]

I have an old Dell Demesion Xps R450, running win98, and somehow it got messed up... We tried to dump everything and start over but we really didnt know exactly what we were doing. Now when i start it up, it goes to the dell screen, then to a black screen w/ a flashing " - " in the top left corner. The emergency boot disk will not do anything when I put it in and start it up, but I can get in to the setup... I just dont know what do do in there...
Any help would be great!
thanks

[JJ 3000]

http://www.hexff.com/win98_install.php

[steelersfan0086]

Thanks, I want to do that but when I put in the CD and/ or the boot disk it doesnt do anything...

Would just getting a new hard drive fix this problem... because when we tried to dump everything before, we only got to about maybe half way, then something went wrong... i cant remember what though.

If the hard drive is messed up would I need to get a new processor also? (my friend was wondering about that).

[street1 (RIP)]

Have you used a 3.5 floppy boot disk? you need to do fdisk and format.
The below link is a file that makes a 3.5 bootdisk for installing Windows
98.


http://1gighost.com/ed/ta/boot98se.exe

[JJ 3000]

Did you change your boot order in BIOS?

[steelersfan0086]

Could u tell me how to do that?

[JJ 3000]

When you first turn you computer on you will see a message to press a certain key to enter setup. It is usually an F key or esc or del. Press that key as it is first starting up. Pay attention, as the message may flash very quickly.

This will take you into BIOS. Here, you want to look for Boot order, or Boot sequence, or maybe even just Boot.

You want to set you CD drive as the first boot device. You, usually, press the plus and minus keys to move you devices up and down.

Now insert the CD into the drive and exit setup SAVING changes.

[steelersfan0086]

Alright! you are the man! I can now get to where i can properly reinstall win98.
thanks for your help
If I have anymore questions, i'll ask.

[JJ 3000]

No problem.
I forgot to mention, when your computer reboots you may see a message to press any key to boot to CD. Just keep tapping the space bar as it starts back up.

[steelersfan0086]

well i ran into another problem... when I boot with the CD's help and i enter the setup to format the hard drive, It starts to do it, then gives me this...

"Setup cannot install Windows 98 on your computer. 
An error was detected while formatting your primary hard disk partition."

When i try to format it by myself by typing in FORMAT C: , it tells me "bad command"...
What should I do now?

[JJ 3000]

Look here
 http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000186.htm
and here
http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000569.htm

[steelersfan0086]

when i try to run fdisk to format my primary hard drive partition, it askes me for the volume label, but its all in symbols and wierd charactors... I looked up alt codes and found all the symbols but it still said that the volume label doesnt match...
any seggestions?

[patio]

Hit Enter for "none"...
But those symbols tell me that drive has issues or is about to fail.
Run chkdsk /r from the boot floppy...be patient and let it finish.
Report back with the results...

[steelersfan0086]

well im probably typing it in the wrong way but...
i typed "chkdsk /r" and it gave me bad command or file name...
the boot floppy would be under the   A:   right?

[patio]

Oooops sorry i forgot we were talking about Win98...
At the A: prompt type scandisk  /C: and hit Enter...