BellaOnline Forums Computers PC Advice From XP back to Windows 98 Help Needed

I have a Compaq Presario 5032 computer, an oldie...I crashed it last April , BAD, couldn't get anything on the screen...a friend worked on it and finally got it up and running but he couldn't get windows 98 back on it, so he put windows XP on it, the problem is the computer is so old that XP makes it run slow and now I can't get the CD burner to work, it will play cd's but not burn them...I want to restore it back to Windows 98, but when I put the restore cd in and click on the restore button...nothing happens...WHY??? Help, please!!! Thanks!!!

Reformat your hard drive and once you do this,you
should be able to re-install Windows 98.

We have 3 computers we train with and we found that XP formats the drive differently.

Go to http://www.ultimatepcrepair.com/news.html
to read more about hard drive formating and more
ways to boost your computer performance

Most likely your file system was converted to NTFS, which is later FS version than FAT32.
What you have to do (If you haven't figured it out yet) is go to someone's home that has a Win98 machine and create a startup disk on his computer, which you then take to your computer and insert it. Then when your computer boots do an FDISK on your Harddrive. Once that is completed you can format the drive with FAT32 file system. As soon as that's done you can install Win98.

I hope it helps...