486 laptop

[Davo]

I have an Accer 486 laptop notepad with a 200mb hd and I accidently formated it with a win98 boot disk,making it fat 32.I know that this machine is only an old clunker .But it is now a challenge to see if it can be converted back to fat 16 doe's anyone have any suggestions

[LJE2]

Just fdisk and reformat using an old dos disk or the boot disk that came with Win 95

[Davo]

I tried that and it comes up with message:
error reading fixed disk

[LJE2]

Boot to a bootable disk with the correct version of command.com, (dos disk, win95 boot disk, and type: fdisk/mbr, after it resets the master boot record type fdisk and make your partitions, and then format, it this doesn't work you will have to fix it with something like Partition majic or a similar program.

[Davo]

Thanks LJE2
But now it won't boot on anything other than a 98 boot disk

[Dash800]

Boot with the 98 disk, remove the partition, save it
boot with a DOS disc or 3.1 disc etc, and remake the partition, it should let you.

[LJE2]

That is true you can use a Win98 disk and set the partition for a FAT 16 but don't put system files on the hard drive with this disk because Win 98 and Win 95 have a different version of command.com, and the Win 98 version is not recognized by Win 95 and vice versa.

[BBA]

You can do it with the Win98 boot disk.

Boot it up and type fdisk and when it prompts you to use large disk support, just answer no, then fdisk it again and it will be FAT16.

Real easy to do!

BBA

[Davo]

Thanks for your reply's,
But I am starting to think that there is a bigger problem with the hard drive than just being converted to fat 32.
It now comes up with:
Error reading fixed disk .
When I go to fdisk on a 98 boot disk .
Perhaps I should find another hd say 6-800mb.
Anyone know were such an animal could be found ?

[KillerBug]

what you got againts FAT32? It is great, here is your game plan: partion the disk to one big FAT32, when you boot from the WIN98 boot disk, type format c: /s at the prompt, this will install a basic version of DOS, and you are on your way. If you cannot get it to do anything in FDISK now, low level format it, your laptop maker should provide you with something at their web site, or you could find out who did the OEM board, and try their web site.

[Davo]

My appologys to all .
I neglected to mention that my hard drive is only 200 Mb.
I don't even know how I got 98 to recognize it

[DavidX]

You already mentioned that it was 200Mb in your first post. Nothing wrong with that. Just do as KillerBug suggests: low-level format it if you have to. Then convert it back to FAT16. With a hard drive that small, you'd probably be better off with DOS and Windows 3.x . Windows 9x takes up a lot of space and you wouldn't have much left over for your applications. But when you can, just replace your present hard drive with a bigger one, then you'll have enough room to use Windows 9x properly.

[jokostel]

i hate to tell you guys but fat 32 supports only a 700mb+ min limit.... up to 2tb i think for max....