buyerninety

RJARRRPCGP , indeed BIOS translation or CDOUBLEJJ mentioned he is installing additional files from Toshiba, possibly software for the laptop that affects the translation... or that software/BIOS is emplacing a HPA [Wiki] onto the HD (also can cause I/O errors) ref; http://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/linux/Large-Disk-11.html section 11.5, Maybe there is a section in the BIOS (particularly relevant to Phoneix BIOSes) which allows him to toggle on/off whether a HPA is activated?. ->CDOUBLEJJ seems happy that the current prob is fixed, so we are really only 'kicking the can' now as to what could have caused the original problem that gave I/O Errors...from elsewhere on the web I believe his orig HD's actually had EXT3 and other partitioned filesystems & OSes on them... If that wasn't it though, for completeness (others having I/O errors) I'll mention a possible 3rd Cause...he mentioned about using a cage for the HD... if that's an electronic HD enclosure there's a possible problem, - from the HPA wiki; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Host_protected_area "Some vendor-specific external drive enclosures (Maxtor) are known to use HPA to limit the capacity of unknown replacement hard drives installed into the enclosure. When this occurs, the drive may appear to be limited in size (e.g. 128 GB), which can look like a BIOS or dynamic drive overlay (DDO) problem. " So if you were using a HD enclosure (not a simple metal and wires box, but rather with an electronic enclosure) it could impose its own translation geometry upon any HD installed in it, possibly giving an incorrect translation for current high capacity HD's. Cheers

Surprized no-ones mentioned 'DBan' - running DBan to wipe that hard drive (you mentioned make, but Not model ID) would remove ANYTHING on that drive (excepting damage area of course) that may be interfering w/ W98's install process...DBan also gives a pretty comprehensive log file output if anything is preventing it wiping clean any area of the drive. Read Dban Warnings Carefully About How To Only Wipe The Desired Drive, personally I don't use it unless ALL drives are disconnected (Hard, USB, Sandisk, etc except floppy or CD) except the 1 drive I want to wipe. (Current vers are intended to run from a CD/DVD, versions 1.06 and back could fit on and run from a floppy...mmmm... seems 1.06 and back are not downloadable from sites associated w/ the author, looks like you may have to burn it to an optical disk then...) After its wiped the drive, Fdisk & Format per normal, then install W98. Incidently, you're installing W98 fm CD? might be better off installing W98 from a Hard Disk (and a hellva lot faster) e.g. http://www.inanis.net/blog/index.php/techie/install-windows-9598me-from-scratch/ . EDIT - I take back the first statement- DBan won't wipe a Host Protected Area (HPA) (and won't check HPA presence/absence) >and won't wipe a Drive Configuration Overlay (DCO).<?. (CMRR Secure Erase {HDDerase} ver 3.1 & later will check for HPA/DCO, and asserts it will attempt to wipe HPA/DCO [although my reading of its documentation suggests it may not succeed if a user or master password to Unlock the drive is not known].)

wsxedcrfv, post #18, stated; "Well, like I said, I don't think that win-98 systems have a "webview" value anywhere in the registry". >Maybe not for activating WebView, but in relation to customisation of it; http://www.mdgx.com/newtip9.htm lists this subKey as possibly applicable to W98; NoCustomizeWebView (= enable/disable Web View customization) for the registry location mentioned in that webpage.