What are the steps to install w98 on a HD which capacity exceeds 137 Gb (aka "large drive")?


From what I have read there are some risks if you don't know what you are doing.
This is how I plan to do.

1-FDISK, originaly, doesn't support large drives. So, first of all, format your new large HD from an existing windows platform.
That can be done from w98 installed on a small HD and using a windows based disk-formating application. The new HD would be installed, of course, as Primary Slave (not as Primary Master) for this operation.
The catch is that you need another physical drive with W98 installed on it to format the new drive because you cannot format a drive Windows is running from even if you do another partition on this drive.

2-How to format? If you installed the right patch to allow w98 to fully use large HD (link) there should be no problem for formatting the whole disc.
However native w98 Scandisk and Disk Defragmenter will crash or corrupt the datas on large partitions unless you updated these application from a fix found on MDGx update thread. But if you forget to do so before defragmenting your partition you will corrupt the datas and may lose everything on it.
So IMO it's preferable to partiton the large drive into several partition of less than 137 Gb (125 GiB).

3-How to install from that?
Shut down the computer.
Swap the HD's in the case, setting the new HD as Primary Master (don't forget to adjust the jumpers). Insert a bootable floppy disk and run the installation from there using basic Dos commands.

4-Once w98 is installed, immediately apply the Break-137Gb-barrier patch (and the 512Mb-Memory-barrier fix at the same time).
As I'v never done it, I'm not sure how the w98 installation will react on the large drive since the patch cannot be applied before the installation. Theoricaly there is no problem until you fill the drive beyond the 137 Gb barrier.
But several partitions could already consist of elementary datas beyond that limit and therefore be erased or corrupted - I don't know.

Please help me if you have experience in this matter.

Why not clone your existing 98 onto the new HD, Fredledingue? The patch would already be there, along with your software. Unless you want the benefits of a fresh install. Xclone works great for this.

FDISK from the updated version installed by the Windows Update for it does support the larger drives. It just shows you an incorrect figure. It's a cosmetic defect but it works fine.

That update does NOT install into the folder that Add/Remove uses to create a Windows Startup floppy, so I just make one and then copy the fixed FDISK from the Windows folder (or Windows/Command, same one) to the floppy, overwriting the old one.

I just did this. But I created a 120GB partition, formatted it FAT32, installed Windows 98SE, installed the Auto-Patcher, and then used Partition Magic 8 to increase the size of the partition to the maximum it allowed. With Partition Magic 8, on large drives it will keep about 15% of the drive as unpartitioned free space. So on my 250GB hard drive I have about 200GB or so as a partition size. About 190GB available for Windows.

Just make sure to go into the Advanced options of msconfig and check to disable scandisk on bad shutdowns.

If you do not have Partition Magic then you can create the full disk with FDISK and format. Again it's just a cosmetic error that it shows the incorrect amount, but Windows will see the whole drive. Have the LLXX 2225 version on a floppy, and hit F8 to bring up the startup menu when Windows Setup reboots the first time. Don't allow it to boot into Windows, but boot to command prompt only, copy the file over to I think the Windows\System\IOSUBSYS folder (check that because I've never done this). Have it replace the one there, ctrl-alt-delete, and then boot normally and have Windows finish its setup.

The advantage is that you'll have use of the whole drive whereas my Partition Magic use reduces that by about 15%. Other than that it's the same thing besides using LLXX's patch in your case and getting the flat buttons on the Close Program box and some other places. MDGx's patch installed with Auto-Patcher doesn't do that. LLXX liked flat buttons and so stuck everyone who uses her patch with it.

I left it like that until I installed Norton Utilities 2002. Right before doing the install I unchecked that to allow scandisk on bad shutdowns, rebooted, and installed it. I checked on the install to have it replace Windows Scandisk with Norton DiskDoctor.

I still wouldn't allow DiskDoctor to fix things it finds in its dos mode. Dos doesn't need it, but I still don't trust it except to tell me if there are errors to fix. If it does, I cancel and let Windows boot and then use DiskDoctor within Windows and let it fix things automatically. I set it to not ask for a backup to be made and to turn off the surface scan. That's just time consuming and a hard drive rarely needs a surface scan. And I set it to do its fixes automatically.

That, and SpeedDisk for defragging works fine.

The Windows Me ScanDisc can be used except NOT for the Thorough option and Disc Defragmenter CANNOT be used. So a 3rd party solution must be used.

Is there a good reason why Partition Magic limits FAT32 sizes to 19x Gigs? Are you sure about the 15%? I though it had hard limit, not a percentage of total drive capacity.

In general on Win98 you want to keep your partitions at or under 120GB


I personally use a Windows Me bootdisk to do my formatting and partitioning as it supports larger drives.

It is not true. DOS does access disk drives using BIOS functions. So, DOS does support LBA48 if the BIOS does. It's a bit funny, but with many motherboards DOS supports larger hard drives then the unpatched Windows does.

So it is possible to partition and format a large disk in DOS.

The simplest way to install Windows on a big HDD is to make the first partition smaller than 128GB. Install the Windows on it, then apply a patch to access the whole HDD.

Partition Magic doesn't have a hard limit. If it were a 500GB hard drive it would reserve about 15% just the same as it does on the 250GB I have. And I don't know why, it just states it on the box and when I've partitioned with it I've seen it not let me move that line or raise the size past a certain point.

Dos and the updated 98SE or the Windows Me Startup Disk FDISK have no problems partitioning the whole drive, and neither does format when formatting it. I've used a SATA 250GB hard drive with the full drive partitioned in one big FAT32 by FDISK and format with no troubles. As I said, I just turned off the Scandisc scan on bad shutdown option in msconfig until I got Norton Utilities 2002's DiskDoctor to replace it.

If I weren't using Partition Magic or BootMagic for anything then I'd have just used FDISK and stuck the 48LBA fix on a floppy like I said. But I'm doing the BootMagic (or BCDEasy if using Vista) thing so I don't have to worry about boot loaders when formatting stuff. Grub stays with its distro as does whatever Windows I'm using. I don't care about 20-30GB not being used. Got plenty of room.

I think drives over 160GB make Partition Magic do that, but I'm not certain. Drives smaller than that can be fully used.

With a SATA drive, there isn't even a need for the 48LBA patch because the Windows driver isn't used, rather the Via (or whatever motherboard you have) SATA/RAID driver installed with the Hyperion's (must use an old version like 4.56v otherwise 98SE has problems). Until that's installed Windows runs it in dos compatibility mode. First thing I install though so that gets fixed quickly!

Unfortunately the EPOX boards I'm currently using have a SATA controller problem. So I switched to ATA drives. The EPOX boards have the Non-Maskable Interrupt support that the SBLive and Audigy ms-dos sound drivers need to function. None of my other boards have that. I'd rather lose SATA (I can turn it off on the Epox boards) and have MS-DOS sound in 98SE's MS-DOS Mode so I'm using the Epox. Heh, it also has a defective USB port that will not put through the signal if I have both of one set plugged in. I just put a powered USB hub plugged into one of them and it works perfectly. My other boards have none of these problems but then, no Audigy 2 ZS in dos.

That's a solution.
As you said, I indeed would like to make a fresh install. In this case it could be possible to do this fresh install on the small HD then transposing it to the large HD.

Now I would like this conversation to be as general as possible, not to discuss my specific case.

Reading on...

Eck,
I think your explaination is clear. Thanks for it.
I summed up the most important things (dropping Norton and Partition Magic stuffs)



On my machine I just have a problem with "F8": It doesn't display boot options such as Dos mode etc. It displays somthing else irrelevant and I didn't figured out how to get to the boot options.
The same advice applies for the 512 Mb memory patch. In this case I let the computer fail to boot and then reboot in safe mode. In safe mode I fixed the stuff and it worked. Do you think I can try it like that? Well, I'll see.
Another trick would be to insert a floppy and force it to start on a boot floppy. Then moving the ad-oc file(s), not from the floppy but from the second HD.

--------------

That's what I'm thinking too. But it's interresting to discuss all the possibilities here.
And why 120 Gb and not 137 Gb (125 GiB)?
------------



Thanks for this clarification: I4'm going to correct the initial post above.



Are you sure? I think that doing so you will have to re-partition the whole drive and erase all datas on it.
This even if you just want to add a partition. Or does it depends on the partition/formating utility?

Has anybody experienced a VIA RAID controller corrupting data in pure DOS (or win98 without the driver installed)?

Keeping it under 120GB keeps many utilities like Scandisk happy.






As mentioned above, You must install Windows on a Hard Disk below the 137GB physical limit.

For example, You have a single 240GB Hard Disk divided in 5 partitions.


C: 50GB = Physical 0 - 50GB
D: 30GB = Physical 50GB - 80GB
E: 50GB = Physical 80GB - 130GB
F: 60GB = Physical 120GB - 180GB
G: 60GB = Physical 180GB - 240GB

You could safely install Windows 98 / 98Se / Me on Drive C: D: & E:

You probably could install it on F: but if any data went beyond the 137GB limit problems would arise. You'd probably be safe though if you installed Windows and then applied the patch straight away.

You would get errors if you installed it on drive G: as it is located beyond the 137GB limit.

No, that's already too large. FAT32 gets wasteful at around 30 GB or so.

The problem is to not let Windows to write anything above the 137GB barrier, before the patch is applied. That's all.

So, you can partition the whole drive before the Windows is installed. Or you can englare the first partition with some partition manager (FDisk will certainly not do that) after the LBA48 patch installation. Or you can add more partitions with FDisk, leaving the first one unchanged.

Repartitioning does not mean partitioning from the beginning. If the drive does have an unassigned space it is enough to add another partition and format just a newly added one. Changing the size of a partition is another story, because FDisk can not do it. But, still, the reformat and data loss is not necesary. As, there are partition managers able to manipulate partition sizes. The Partition Magic is the most famous one, I believe. But, versions before 7 were not able to handle LBA48 sized hard drives correctly.

Ranish Partition Manager can replace fdisk and it has a dead simple GUI. It claims "> 128 GiB disk support but only upto 1.99 TiB - UNTESTED". It is also able to resize (with some limitations and no user friendly method) FAT partitions. And it's free and only 64k.
The limitation is partition resizing is that it does not move files, it just changes a few numers in the definitin of the partition. So it is also instant fast. Big plus is also its "quick format".
I've never used fdisk in years unless I didn't have Ranish's "part.exe". And of course I can talk the talk, but I don't have any big disk to test that. Cheers.

My experience with PM is as follows. Started used this prog pre Norton when it was still made by PowerQuest. Version 6 was the first one I tried. PowerQuest stated that this version was tested with HDD up to 40Gb. I used v6 on 60Gb HDDs and had no problems.

When I upgraded a 60Gb HDD to a 120Gb HDD and used v6 to transfer info (60gb ->120gb) it caused errors which resulted in corruption of the MBR of the 120Gb HDD (according to PowerQuest support). After several failed attempts with v6, I purchased v8 (still from PowerQuest) and there were no errors. v8 was apparently safe with drives of 160Gb.

About 2 years ago when I purchased a SATA 250Gb HDD and bought PM8 from Norton this worked fine.

However, I always run PM from the dos diskettes and do not install the prog. It much easier that way and in any case even if the prog is fully installed it will still reboot to dos to make any changes. The only thing I do install is the boot manager BootMagic on the first primary and active partition.

And for total clarity, you can use PM on a new drive to create a partition and format it too by way of the dos diskettes. I also find it a lot faster than FDISK.

I have also tried BiNG (free version) which can handles extremely large HDD. It also works in dos mode and it is also fine. There are of course many more.

Good Luck

Actually to my surprise, when I used PM8 to expand the size of the partition while I was in Windows, it did not restart into dos to do it. I guess it only needs to do that on NTFS partitions.

This time I had used the PM floppy to initially partition and format 120GB, installed Windows and assorted updates and software including PartitionMagic. Then I expanded the size to the maximum PM allowed, about 200GB of my drive like I said before.

If I had used FDISK I could have use of that 15% that PM leaves as unpartitioned free space, but then I'd be afraid to use PartitionMagic utilities to work with the drive in the future. It keeps that free space for some reason so I just went along with it. I'll never fill it up anyway!

BootMagic works great as a boot loader for my Windows/Linux on the other hard drive dual boot.

You can FDISK the whole thing. Problem is going into SafeMode on first boot, and I did that once for a problem, has Windows continue the installation without the cd available! It does finish, but it was weird not having some of the stuff it copies over after that first boot.

Better to find some way of doing CommandPromptOnly. Maybe holding the ctrl key down? Or tapping F8 instead of holding it? Gotta be some way.

And the Via Sata controllers, with the driver installed on the very first Windows boot and NOT continuing in MS-DOS Compatibility Paging Mode, work fine (except on these 2 stupid Epox boards I have now). No corruption no matter how big. That ESDI.PDR driver isn't used. Installing the 48 bit patch is not needed, but I suppose can't hurt things since the driver it changes isn't being used.

I must admit that having used various versions of PM over the past 6-7 yrs, I have never had one instance when PM held back unpartitioned free space that I could not use in the way that you have described.

The only stipulation that I understand exists is that PM requires partitions be <90% full.

Cheers

Partition Magic allows to create another partition in the unused space, or divide the disk into 2 big partitions. What it can't do is format a whole 250 GB (decimal gigabyte) hard drive with a single FAT32 partition. So far I have not tried bigger than 250 GB drives.

I'm going to try it on a 400 Gb HD.
I'll post the results here. (in one week or so, the time to manage/save the datas which are already on it, on a downsized partition.)



That was it! Many thanks! Actualy F8 let me choose the boot drive (floppy, HD, CD-rom etc).

I still didn't make up my mind about the size and number of partitions.
Would be fun to have one single partition of 400 Gb, but for safety sake, I may do 3 x 135 Gb or 135 Gb + 265 Gb. Or a 5 Gb partition for Windows and program files, the rest, 395 Gb for documents. That way I could easily ghost it and roll it back by restoring the whole partition whenever I need without affecting the documents.

So this thread is about, how you cant install a internal HD later then 137GB on WIN98SE

I was thinking about buying a HD , 160GB, i cant use it?

Please read,... then write.

Then it's hardware managed, before the OS boots.
+booting DOS 6 in safe mode was achieved by the Ctrl key, maybe not for Win98.

Of course it's hardware managed (before OS boots). How else?

There's no reason why this hard drive couldn't be used in Windows 98 SE, is there?

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=4898004

yep, it should work.

Just as soon as you install Win98SE install LLXX's 2225 patch or Gapes Unofficial Service Pack 3 beta 1




Personally I'd divide it into at least 2 partitions, each no partition bigger than 120GB (you still need the patches though)

Excellent tutorial on how to use FDISK:

http://fdisk.radified.com/

(if it's your first time, you definetely have to read it)

As I can see the catch is, finaly, to get a suitable bootable floppy with the updated files either by downloading the M$ Q311561 patch here before creating your boot floppy (then if you want, re-apply MDGx's BHDD30 update) or by downloading BOOT98SC.EXE from bootdisk.com and replace the files but the ME version should work, since updated files are from ME.

During the w98 installation, when the installer reboot, you have to press F8 (or Ctrl on some computers) and reboot in DOS. Then replace the files (both those from the 48BitLBA - Break 137Gb barrier - patch and from BHDD30.zip.) to avoid system crash or other problems.
You must also replace scandisk.exe from MDGx's package SCANFRAG (Thanks Dencorso for this info).

To facilitate this task I wrote a batch script. Instead of typing every command one by one, just type the location and name of the bat file containing htis code.

This script works if all the files are located in the same directory as that of the bat file. The source directory not being coded in. You must pick the files manualy from an updated system and copy them to the directory where you will place the batch script.
Before gathering all the files from theirs Windows locations you must have applied all these patches (already mentioned above):
Q311561
BHDD30
48BitLBA
SCANFRAG

It will aslo open system.ini to allow you the make the changes for more than 512Mb of memory.

Code Updated 8th July 2008


Any comment?

Yes. Two. I'm sure you know this already, but just for the sake of future readers of this topic:
(1) The IOS.VXD one should use is 4.10.2225 and is findable inside Gape's Unofficial Service Pack or inside Q239696.
(2) The LLXX's patched ESDI_506.PDR that one should use is 4.10.2225, unless one has an IBM Laptop.

And, BTW, great post: I'm sure it'll be of help for many users. You rock!

PS: It's also a good idea to remind the reader that the IO.SYS from Q311561 (which you alreadey had given a pointer to) must be installed also to the HDD, not just to the floppy bootdisk. Of course it'll end there if the floppy is used to format/s the HDD. But perhaps your batch might install it to both the root dir and c:\windows\command\EBD, just in case. And since it is named winboot.98s inside Q311561, you'll need to rename it to IO.SYS, before doing the copies.

dencorso,
Q311561.exe is an installer, I can't etract individual files via batch script.
My IO.SYS on my root drive at the moment dates from dec 2001. Is it the latest updated version?

I had a quick look to:
311561usa8.exe

For the record, it appears to be a CAB self-extracting archive, with a stub of 67224 bytes.

Search in it with a hex editor, for "PMSCF" the "P" is the last byte of the stub, "MSCF" is the header of the CAB.

Once you remove the first 67224 (and possibly change the extension to CAB), it should be uncompressable with "normal" EXTRACT.EXE. (did not test personally)

Contents are these:


The two winboot.98x should be IO.SYS renamed for Gold and SE.

jaclaz

I'm not sure if I will include IO.SYS because it's supposed to be created during disk formating and also because I'm not sure it's possible to replace it even in DOS without error or that it's safe to do that.

Note: If you face the "Drive running in DOS compatibility mode" issue after applying LLXX's ESDI_506.PDR version 4.10.2225, then use version 4.10.2222.

Note: batch script updated! (Added: Fdisk.exe)

Yes, it is! There are two versions of Win 98SE IO.SYS:
IO.SYS 222390 04/23/1999 22:22 (Win 98SE original)
IO.SYS 222670 12/01/2001 09:37 (Win 98SE Q311561)

In fact, a short time ago, jaclaz found out there exists a further (unofficial) patch to the Q311561 IO.SYS, but for the moment I'm not recomending it, until I can give a closer look into it, to convince myself it's safe and works OK, which I'm meaning to do as soon as I get enough time for it. You can find out more about it here: Patched-IOSYS-for-98SE-and-ME

As for extracting individual files from Q311561 (and from Q239696) you can do it simply by opening them inside WinRAR or 7-Zip. It's easier than what jaclaz proposed above, but requires that you have access to a second machine, already running any Windows, from 95A to Vista (or Linux). I don't know any DOS program able to do it directly, however, sorry! My idea was simply to start the batch using previously extracted files...

BTW, provided you have booted the system from a different disk from the one in which you intend to replece the IO.SYS, I'm positive it is safe to do it in DOS mode. You can rename IO.SYS to, say, IO.OLD and add the new IO.SYS. It'll work fine, from Win 95 up to Win ME (DOS 7.00 to 8.00). This is not true, however, for DOS 6.22 or any earlier version (they required that IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS be physically the first and second files in the disk, respectively, and also that their directory entries be the first and second entries, respectively, or else would refuse to boot... but that's in the past already, isn't it?).

@dencorso

From batch, you use a DOS file splitter, like PARTCOPY:
http://web.archive.org/web/20010116021600/...ine/pcopy02.zip
(courtesy of the Wayback Machine)

or a similar one, to make a file from the bytes starting from byte 67224 (or use GSAR to find occurence of "MSCF"), then run EXTRACT.EXE on the partial "tail" file.

Not exactly starightforward, but allows for doing everything on a DOS machine.

jaclaz

The easiest way to "extracting the file" is still to apply the patches and pick the files manualy.

The idea is that you have already w98 running (either on the same machine or on another one), then it make sens to apply all the patches.
If you don't, let's say you have only an XP computer and you have another computer without anything or you want to downgrade an XP cmputer to w98, in this case you can try different methods for extracting the files. But even easier would be that I upload the files on my website.

Note: batch script updated! (Added: io.sys)

@Fredledingue

I had taken this:

as:
"it's impossible to extract individual files from batch script"

and just wanted to let you know that it is actually possible.



Definitely easier.

jaclaz

If you have Nero, you can create a copy of the boot floppy on CD and the CD will act as a bootable disc.
To do that: insert the bootable floppy into its drive, open Nero, create "new", select CD (Boot), save, insert a blank CD-rom and burn. While burning Nero reads the datas from the floppy and copy them on the CD.

@jaclaz: PARTCOPY and GSAR! I didn't know either... great findings, jaclaz, great findings! Thanks a lot!

@Fredledingue: I think the SCANFRAG update adds too much things to the system, in addition to the needed SCANDISK.EXE, so I seached some more and I just found an alternative source for it: the Win ME OEM bootdisk available at bootdisk.com (link)... instead of applying SCANFRAG just create the boot diskette and open the EBD.CAB it contains and extract the Win ME DOS SCANDISK.EXE from inside it. If, however, you decide to apply SCANFRAG, do it first and then apply BHDD30, in this order, just to remain on the safe side, because the dskmaint.dll in SCANFRAG is from Win 98, while the dskmaint.dll in BHDD30 is from Win ME (the one that must be used).

You both rock!

Cluster size and exploring the limits of FAT-32

http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.p...f15325586abfa68

or try this:

http://tinyurl.com/4dxdcz

------------------

Windows 98 large file-count tests on large volume (500 gb hard drive)

http://tinyurl.com/3p285h

Thanks for these valuable informations, 98-Guy!
This confirm and precise what we have been talking or speculating about.

I talked a lot, and it was time to walk the talk...

I installed w98se on a 400Gb had disk, on a 38Gb partition on it, with another 345 Gb partition left for multimedia stuffs.
I still have the old hdd, with the full installation still intact, which is very useful.

The funny thing is that the two partitions/drive letters of the hard disk are saddled on the old disk drive letter:
C :, D:, E
C and E belong to a same physical hard disk and D belongs to another one. Not very important, just to say that it can happen.

First thing I have learned is: Do not use ME Bootdisk-Custom from bootdisk.com: It failed to porperly delete old partitions causing a hell of troubles. (full story here)

After I realised that, I used fdisk and format from BHDD30.zip and it worked.
Maybe other bootdisks from bootdisk.com work, I didn't test them.

Then more problems!
When launching windows setup I got this:

and then nothing happened.

==> I solved this problem by rebooting via floppy boot disk (original) in "Safe mode command prompt only".
Then he accpeted to install windows.

During restart, after the installer had copied all files, I pressed Ctrl and rebooted in dos mode to replace all files for supporting big hard drives, and to edit system.ini to support more than 512 Mb of memory.

For that I used the batch script above.
To my susprise, several files couldn't be copied because the location didn't existed yet or were not present in the directory where the bat file was.
The latter is very surprising, but ok.
Very cool was the edit command to add entries into system.ini.

Unfortunately, Windows didn't want to start:

Pffft...!
That's the worse error you can have because you can't load in safe mode.

==> The reason? IO.SYS had not been replaced by the bat script. In fact it cannot be replaced in plain Dos mode. That's maybe the only file on the whole system which can be deleted/replaced under windows but not under Dos.
So, I reset the jumpers and the ribbon cables to get back to the old hardware configuration and restarted on the old hard drive. Then, I replaced IO.sys on the new drive, simply with windows explorer. (full story here)

The question is: How to do without a second drive (<137 Gb) with windows already installed? I don't know, but I'v read that such error is rather rare.
I hope I'v got all the "rare" errors here.

Maybe a bad IO.sys on the boot floppy was also the reason why setup didn't start at first?

Hi, Fredledingue!
Sorry, it's my bad... I forgot to mention that you need to change IO.SYS attributes before being able to replace it in DOS mode, AND did not recheck your batch file for it. So, let's spell it here:

1) run ATTRIB IO.SYS from the root directory and you'll see:
SHR IO.SYS C:\IO.SYS
...this means that IO.SYS has the System, Hidden and Read-only attributes

2) now run ATTRIB -s -h -r IO.SYS from the root directory

3) run again ATTRIB IO.SYS from the root directory and you'll see:
IO.SYS C:\IO.SYS
...this means that IO.SYS now has no attributes

4) replace IO.SYS

5) now run ATTRIB +s +h +r IO.SYS from the root directory

6) run again ATTRIB IO.SYS from the root directory and you'll see:
SHR IO.SYS C:\IO.SYS
...this means that IO.SYS has again the System, Hidden and Read-only attributes

Of course, you only need to add to the batch file step (2) before replacing IO.SYS and step (5) after it.
It also means that you need to have ATTRIB.EXE present in the directory from which the batch file is run.

Sorry. I've performed the substitution of IO.SYS from plain DOS so many times already that I forgot to mention you need to change the attributes, and then change them back... But it can be done from DOS, and it can be done with a batch file. Windows Explorer doesn't care much about the DOS file-attributes, but DOE does care.

In what regards the attribution of the drive letters, DOS will give C: to the active primary partition in the first physical disk, then D: to the active primary partition in the second physical disk, then give the next letters to all drives in the extended partition of the first physical drive, then to those in the second physical drive (and then give letters to any inactive additonal primary partitions present in the first, then the second physical drives, in this order, when they exist).

Hi, denocrso!
I always thought the oposite: that Windos cared more about attributes han dos, that dos can do everything...
All right: I updated the batch script.

Added attrib commands and also changed some "move" into "copy" to avoid the files to disapear in case we neeed them again.
The attrib command should work if you restart from the boot option menu because it uses the windows installed files. Maybe not if you reboot from a floppy.

Do you think tha a wrong IO.SYS could be the cause of a failed setup launch?

Sorry to have taken so long to reply. Got far too many chestnuts in my plate to chew...

All you need is to make sure you have ATTRIB.EXE (14.89 KiB) present in the floppy.

I guess you've just shown it does

I've done some tests with two different 500 MB external USB drives, a SAMSUNG HD501LJ (inside a Conceptronic Grab'n'Go CSM3PL500) and a IOMEGA HDS72505, both formatted as FAT-32, with 32 KiB clusters (15.2 million clusters).

The FORMAT, FDISK, SCANDISK and SCANDSKW/DISKMAINT recomended in this thread work flawlessly.
So does NDD (2002) for DOS. XXCOPY (32-bit, v. 2.96.5) also did a nice job in copying the contents of one of them (full to the brink) to the other, although it took just over 8h to finish.
On the other hand ndd32.exe (v. 18.0.0.62, from NSW 2005) gives a nasty BSOD quite fast on either. It isn't able to tackle 15.2 millions of clusters. This is to add one more result to the excellent info provided by 98 Guy in the links in post #37.

Using Partition Magic 8 I have had perfect success using a WD-250 My Book essential version. There is a trick to it though. First wipe out any existing partions. Next create a fat32 primary partition with a size of 120 gig (or 50%). Next create a second fat32 primary partition for the remaining 120 gigs. You do not want any extended partitions or logical drives. Once you are done Windows will read, write, defrag(oem), and scandisk(oem) each 120 gig partition without error msgs. Even Norton Utilities sees it as a clean drive. You don't need any LBA drivers or patched files. Now you can only have 2 primary partions on a single physical drive in Win98 so this doesn't work with drives larger than 250 gig without wasting a whole bunch of drive space.

Hope this helps.

Grizzly Bear