   Reinstalling windoze 98 problem. (boot sector).
  I had win98 not too long ago, which ran fairly well. But whenever i connect with AOL, the internet is so so so slow.But not just the internet, even my keystrokes take a few seconds to even show up on the url or wherever - like my system resources went down to 10% or something.I noticed kazaa (my brother used it i guess) on the desktop. and i heard rumors about some viruses that could be spread by using kazaa. so i decided to format my hard drive. i did a simple format, "format c:"i tried to reinstall win98.  at first setup i heard a beep and was asked if i wanted to modify the boot sector. i said YES for that.  then during the first stage of the windows 98 installation process, after the progress bar reached all the way to 100%, i get that beep again with the small window...but i couldnt see the window because it was all black. but im pretty sure it was that same message asking me if i wanted to modify the boot sector. but at that point, the computer is completely frozen, immediately beeping at any key i press.I even tried win ME, with the exact same results.the only OS that i have that does work is win XP. it installs and runs just fine (im still using it). BUT, this will be deactivated within about 25 days since this copy of win XP originally came with my gateway notebook.what can I do?what is wrong with my hardrive? just get a new one?i tried several times with the win98 installation (of course i would partition it to FAT32).any help much needed. otherwise im shelling out big bucks for a new drive. 
  Ok, first off, do you have any important information, if you do back it up, if worse goes to worse, all you will have to do is reinstall windows 98. Basically what I would suggest you do, is format your hard disk completely, including mbr, everything, if you have the winXP install disk, just destroy all of the partitions, and remake them as needed, then install whatever operating system you want, it isn''t a hard disk problem, it is a boot sector problem most likely, so that means your windows 98, ME, whatever won''t work for some reason, you have to format the drive and do it over as a result, otherwise the hardware is fine. Unless you want a larger drive, then by all means use the other one as your backup, and build the system using the new one, and then either have the other drive as is, as the "slave" to the primary hdd, and then use the files from there, or place the files where you want to on the new hard disk, and format the old one. Either way, hope this info helps, and good luck.P.S: Yes, there are some ways that viruses can go on your computer by using kazaa, mainly from downloading mp3 files from someone, and that file could have a virus. Also, KaZaa also has some nice built-in spyware, as a bonus! ;  Yes !!! Fear the MP3 virii Macros!!!! They will give SARS to your computar !Seriously mp3s can''t infect you. executables and stuff like word documents excel documents ini vbs etc can. ;  thanks for the replies.but i tried exactly what you suggested several times with no success...i get the exact same problem!!i used winxp cd to delete all partitions. then i use it to create a fat32 partition (can i skip this step and let win98 do it for me?).next thing i do is insert win98 cd and run setup. again, the same boot sector problem appears.i tried to format /MBR as well, but that doesnt seem to affect anything...i get same problem, again!im going to do this one more time, just to make sure i didnt miss anything!ill keep checking back here using my notebook.thanks. ;  Ok, here is an idea, install windows 98 on a fat32 partition, then install windows XP after that on another, smaller fat32 partition, what that would do, is it would give you the windows XP bootloader if it works correctly, and, as a special bonus, the NTLDR, will have a menu that will have a choice between windows XP and 98, and that would hopefully be able to boot both systems, and eventually only 98, after that, go into XP and edit the boot.ini, and you can delete the windows XP pro stuff out of it, if the 98 crap works, and then you will have a working 98 install with some weird hack around it. I hope this info is useful.  ;  I don''t think so. ;  If it's really the MBR, try an fdisk /mbr which will fix the MBR, or a "low level" format, which you do by getting special software from your hard drive manufacturer. The low level format should fix things anyway if it's a problem with stuff on the hard drive.It doesn't seem to me like the MBR would be the problem, but I don't know much about the internal structure of a hard drive or Windows 98. By what you say, it seems like Win98 might have problems trying to access/write the MBR. It could be a hard drive thing or maybe possibly the motherboard/BIOS preventing writing to it.   [edited by - Ivko on August 2, 2003 2:11:43 AM]