Before I get into this whole FDISK process Id like to first suggest you try the process posted above but DO NOT restart you computer when the setup hangs. Whilst in the making of this post I found even the way I will show bellow hangs at the same place, BUT, and this is a big but, I found leaving the setup on that screen for some time it did actually get going and installed just fine. Time is the key here I belive.
With that sead, here is the post i promised:
Boot from a Win 98 Boot disk that has SMARTDRV.exe and XCOPY.exe (I use
THIS one).
Select "Without CD-ROM Support".
At the A: prompt type "FDISK" without the quotes.
select "Y" to enable large disk support.
At the "FDISK Options" screen, select option 4 to view the currant status of the hard drives partitions. If you find existing partitions you need to delete them--> Back at the "FDISK Options" screen, select option 3. If you found anything other than DOS paritions when you examined the drive you can delete them by selection option 4 (in the "Delete DOS Partition or Logical DOS Drive" screen).
If you had more than one DOS partition select option 3, go through the prompts and delete all Logical DOS drives. Then select option 2 and delete any Extended DOS partitions. Next select option 1 (in the "Delete DOS Partition or Logical DOS Drive" screen) and delete the Primay DOS partition.
If you only have one partition just select option 1 (in the "Delete DOS Partition or Logical DOS Drive" screen) and delete the Primary partition.
You should now have deleted all partitions on the drive. Back at the "FDISK Options" screen select option 4 again, if you have succefully deleted all partitions you should see something like "No partitions defined" near the bottom of the screen.
If my explanation on deleting partitions was no good to you then have a read through the following lik:
http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000344.htm
-------------------------------------------------------
The next step is to make two partitons. One Primary DOS partiton which will be used to acually install XP to, and one Logical DOS drive inside an Extended DOS partiton which will be used to copy the installation files to. If you want to make more partitions its up to you but thats not the way im doing it here.
At the "FDISK Options" screen, select option 1. Now at the "Create DOS Partiton or Logical DOS Drive" screen, select option 1, when asked to used the maximum available size, press "N" for no then press enter.
Next you will be asked for the size of the partiton to make in MB or %, simply minus 600MB from the total availible disk space and input that number. So you look at it like this:
1GB = 1000MB
your hard drive may be 40GB, so: 40GB = 40000MB - 600MB = 39400MB (I think, hehe)
In that case you would input "39400" and press enter.
Back at the "FDISK Options" screen, select option 2 (Set active Partition). In the next screen input "1" to select the partition to make active and press enter.
Back to the "FDISK Options" screen again and select option 1. On the "Create DOS Partiton or Logical DOS Drive" screen select option 2 (Create Extended DOS Partition). On the next screen you enter the size of the partiton to make. You need to use the full amount of available space for this partition so just press enter with the amount it has already entered for you. Just do the same thing on the next few screens untill you come to a screen telling you "All available space in the Extented DOS Partition is assigned to Logical Drives" then press Esc to continue.
--------------------------------------------------
Hopefully you now have the two partitions needed to copy the installation files and install Windows to. Next you need to format both partitions.
Press Esc to exit FDISK then Reboot (from the boot disk still). This time select with CD-ROM support.
When you reach the A: prompt type "format C:" without the quotes and press enter, select "Y" to proceed with format and wait untill it finishes. You will then be prompted to enter a volume lable, put whatever you like here or just press enter for none (I choose none).
At the A: prompt again, type "format d:" without the quotes and press enter select "Y" to proceed with format and wait untill it finishes. You will the be prompted to enter a volume lable, put whatever you like here or just press enter for none (I choose none).
Now insert your XP-CD, wait a second then at the A: prompt type "SMARTDRV.EXE" without the quotes.
When smartdrv.exe has loaded, at the A: prompt type "XCOPY X:\I386\*.* D:\I386\ /s/e" without the quotes, change "X:" for your CD-ROM drive letter. If you used the boot disk from the link I gave then your CD-ROM drive letter will be "X". This will now copy all the installation files from your XP-CD to the partition you created earlier.
Once all the files have been copied over:
At the A: prompt type "D:" without the quotes.
Next type "I386\WINNT.EXE" without the quotes. After this you may be asked to specify the location of setup files, if so, type "I386" without the quotes and press enter.This should start the Windows XP installation process.
Once the setup starts you MUST remove the boot disk from the floppy drive BEFORE the setup reboots your computer.
Note: and this is a BIG NOTE, if the setup APPEARS to hang at the copying files to hard drive screen DO NOT restart, just wait it WILL start eventually.
If you find my FDISK instructions seem a little choppy just do a google on FDISK.
Hope this helps.
Linear Mode
