TargaX

Almost sounds to me like your BIOS isn't setup for plug-and-play. Check BIOS to make sure you have plug-and-play (auto or whatever) and check the video card manual (or website) to see if there's any jumpers or anything you need to do to set it up for plug and play. Socket 7.... sounds like it may be a BIOS issue. Make sure you have the latest BIOS for your mobo.

Tried sysinternals NTFS for Win98 several days ago. Gives BSOD on bootup and Win98 won't load. Luckily I have a dual-boot system and could boot into XP to modify and remove the files. If you could get it working, I doubt it has any effect whatsoever on the 137gb limit. Simply loads some NTFS files to allow 98 to "see" NTFS formatted partitions (read only).

Thanks for the quick response and for going through the trouble of testing! Question though with regard to the test: 1. Do your test motherboard/BIOS and IDE controller both support 48-bit LBA? 2. Was the installation partition less than 137gb in size? From the information I've been reading with regard to "how to install 98SE with 48-bit LBA support", it says to: 1. Create a partition smaller than the 137gb limit. 2. Install the OS. 3. Install Intel Application Accelerator. With mobo/BIOS and IDE controller support, as well as IAA drivers, Win98SE has no problems with drives larger than 137gb. So the only part that I'm missing from this equation is the IAA. To test my theoretical setup, you'd need to have the primary partition (C: drive) at less than 137gb, and also have no FAT32 partitions on the drive above the 137gb barrier (ie: Only NTFS or unallocated space beyond 137gb). -T

Hi all. Been reading and reading, but can't find the answer to my specific question. Seems that everyone assumes that if you have a hard drive over 137gb, you're going to attempt to access all portions of the hard drive with Win98 (which I'm not). So... I have a "techie question": 250gb hdd. Partitioned and formatted in the following manner: Primary Partition (Win98SE going here): 15gb Extended Partition/Logical drives (in this order): 15gb NTFS 32gb FAT32 32gb FAT32 32gb FAT32 50gb NTFS 50gb NTFS 98SE will be insalled on the 15gb primary partition. WinXP will be installed on the first logical drive of the extended partition (dual-boot system). Notice that the FAT32 logical drives on the extended partition do not cross the 137gb mark. 15+15+32+32+32= 126gb. Past the 126gb mark are the two final NTFS volumes. Motherboard BIOS supports 48-bit LBA. IDE controller (Intel ICH5R) supports 48-bit LBA. Under other circumstances, using Intel's Application Accelerator would guarantee 48-bit LBA compatibility with Win98, but this chipset is not supported by IAA (there's only a RAID version of IAA for this chipset). So my question is this: As long as I do not create a FAT32 logical drive past the 137gb "barrier" on this hdd, will Windows98SE accurately read and write to the drive? Seems logical, but I'd rather have a definitive answer before I trust my data to a "maybe" guess. Thanks!

I tried exactly as you suggested, and this is exactly what happens for me. ^^^ I don't know what your settings are for explorer, but mine "collapses the folder and shifts the selection to the top folder where the - was clicked". (Win98SE + SP1) Maybe a registry tweak?

You have a few options. First, you could always remove the hard drive and put it in another computer as a slave hard drive so you can see what's on it (whether it has room to install the OS, etc). You could also run scandisk and check for errors this way. Secondly, you could enter BIOS setup (the "black" screen at boot-up should tell you what key to press. Usually Delete or an F-key) and change the boot order so that the floppy drive is available to boot from. Save changes and exit, then boot from a floppy. You'll end up at the A:> prompt. Type 'C:' and then 'dir' (w/o quotes) to see what's on C: drive and how much free space it has. If the data on the HDD isn't needed/wanted, simply run the format command after you boot from the floppy (format c:). FDISK is for creating partitions, and shouldn't be needed at this point. Or... it's possible you're not able to boot from a floppy because the CD drive is higher in the boot sequence list than the floppy drive. Remove the CD from the CD drive, then try booting from the floppy. You can also check in BIOS whether the hard drive is being detected or not. BIOS IDE detection should be on "auto".