Member Panel

This means - grab a formatted floppy disk - download the utility - run the .exe file with the floppy disk in the drive - re-boot with the floppy disk in the drive - A:\Hutil.exe in DOS mode. I take it you have access to another PC (i.e. the one you're using to visit PCHF)...

Yes, I understand that, but it won't let me type in A:/hutil.exe. It just keeps trying to boot from drive A, and says there are no boot files on the drive, tells me to hit home to boot from local drive, no boot files, hit any key to boot from drive A, etc...

ok, so get a boot disk (a windows 98 one will do as you are only after a Dos prompt) www.bootdisk.com. Boot up with that and when you get to the a:\ prompt, put in the utility disk and type in the command.

OK, need to eat, take a breather, before i toss it out the window. I'll try the diskettes, but I wonder if it isn't reading them due to never having a floppy drive until after the problem started and didn't get a chance to recognize it as p&p device. Thank you, and will get back a little later!

Alright, here's what may have worked. I tried my wind. xp disk, reformatted HD with it, it still continued to reload, so, I finally tried set-up options, reset the bios to original (might have screwed that up myself to begin with), then manually recognized the 3.5 in set-up options, put the win 98 startup disk in I had made earlier, and I finally got the windows xp set-up page (welcome to windows xp!!) I will finish the install out and hope it works just fine. I don't really know what I did wrong, but at least I learned what to look for. The start-up disk site was very helpful. I will also run the hutil.exe at next startup to ensure nothing is wrong with the HD. Thanks very much!!!

That's great news. Happy to help