HD format problem

[DHatAVI]

I'm helping a friend set up his computer and I am running into a problem. It's a new Celeron setup with a Western Digital 6. something HD. His BIOS recognizes it correctly, FDISK recognizes it, I Fdisk'd it using large disk support and as a single partition.
The problem that I'm running into is when I try formatting it using a Win 98 start up disk, it formats it as a 4.1 Gig drive and not the 6.? that it is (sorry I don't have the specific #'s). When I try to boot from the HD, it gives me a 'Missing COMMAND.COM' message durring boot (I have installed the system files using the /s switch and using sys c:, same results).

Anyone have some Ideas?

Thanks, David

[Susan]

I would run thorough scandisk on it to rule out a faulty drive...

[philipg]

Check out Western digital's site on Ez-bios problems. You may have something not configured correctly like a jumper for instance.

I have a WD 6.4 GB HD (26400) from them and it gives me nothing bt trouble if I don't install a certain way every time.

[DHatAVI]

Thanks for the reply's

Susan: I did try scandisk, although I didn't do a surface scan. Maybe i'll try that. No errors reported initially.

Philipg: I went to their site and downloaded the latest setup software and checked the Q&A list. I did see something about the BIOS recognizing it properly, but not working correctly because of an older BIOS.

I will try a complete scandisk and then their setup program next.

I did try to set up a 4 gig partition as the primary DOS partition with the system files, and it really didn't like that! It wouldn't even try to boot. It would ask for a boot disk.

I will post the fix here when it's up and running.

David

[Underclocked]

I think you should just skip the scandisk for now and go into the EZ drive program. If that fixes it and there is nothing wrong with the drive - it will take no more than 5 minutes.
If you have to go into WDdiag to search for errors and repair, that part can take considerable time.