Formatting a hard drive

Now to begin, you will need a MS Dos6.xx or Windows9x boot
disk.

STEP ONE
You first need to decide what operating system you intend to load after
formatting the hard drive. It is best and easiest to use a boot disk for
that Operating System, such as MS Dos6.2 or Windows95b or
Windows98SE. You will need the proper Windows95/98 boot disk in
order to load the these operating systems on the computer, else it will reject
loading due to the wrong Operating System on the computer.

STEP TWO
Insert your boot disk in the floppy drive and start the computer.
Once the system has completed booting and an A: prompt appears we are ready to
start.

Type: format C: /s [press Enter]

This statement tells the system to format your "C"
drive and when it is finished to copy the system files to the drive, (the /s
switch for 'System'). You can format a different drive this way by
using a different drive letter.

Format should display: WARNING, ALL DATA
ON
NON-REMOVABLE DISK DRIVE C: WILL BE LOST!
Proceed with Format (Y/N)?
Type [Y] [Press
ENTER]

Your screen should display the size of your drive and a
countdown in percentage of formatting completed. Depending on your
computer's speed and the size of the drive it can take from a few minutes to
over 15minutes.

STEP THREE
When it reaches 100% complete, you
will see a new message:
FORMAT
COMPLETE. SYSTEM TRANSFERRED.

This indicates that the files required to boot your
computer from the hard drive have been copied from the floppy to the hard
drive. The computer can now boot from the hard drive without a boot disk
in the floppy drive.

You will see one last message:
Volume label (11 characters, ENTER for
none)?
Type anything you like or leave it blank
- [Press ENTER]

You can now begin to load your
Operating System.

Special Note:
You may
receive the error message:
"insufficient memory to load
system files"

This is caused by the lack of a memory manager loaded at boot
and your PC can only access the first 1mg of ram memory. There are two
possible solutions:

1) Omit the /s switch when
formatting. This is done by typing this:
FORMAT
C: [press enter]

Then when the format is complete, manually add the system files
to your hard drive by using this command:
SYS C: [press enter]

2) You will need to load a memory manager in order to overcome
this issue. Not knowing what operating system boot disk you are using is an
issue here. However, Windows98 boot disks load a memory manager, so let us
assume it is either Windows95 or earlier.

You need to add the file HIMEM.SYS to your boot disk and then
modify your Config.sys file on the boot disk.

Download HIMEM.SYS 10k

Unzip the file to your boot disk and add this line in
the Config.sys, (make this the first line):

DEVICE=himem.sys

Now, reboot your computer with the boot disk and it
should work fine.

You will find that the boot disks we offer for
download are all configured with a Memory manager and contain the file:
HIMEM.SYS