What I would do depends on the make of the drive.  If it is a Western Digital go to www.westerndigital.com and download their diagnostic tool app.  Load it on a floppy and use it to test the drive, and ultimately to write zeroes to the whole drive for a clean start.  I think Maxtor has a similar app or you can do a google search for DOS based apps that will zero a whole drive. After that I'll bet you can use a Win 98 SE startup to fdisk and format in FAT 32.

>I didn't receive any replies to original message, so I am reposting in the
>hope someone can help.
>
>I'm trying to recycle an old Dell Optiplex GX-100.  I was able to
>successfully reformat the HDD's of two (From Win2000 to Win98SE) and reinstall the basic
>drivers to get a Celeron 700 MHz and 600 MHz system working but failed to get
>the HDD drive recognized on a 550 MHz system. The drive was recognized by the
>other two PC's, but on POST, the error message stated that the drive was not
>being recognized due to there not being a primary DOS partition. It also states
>that if you used a third-party utility to format the HDD to consult that
>program. I used Partition Magic 8.0 to reformat NTFS to FAT32 on the other two
>drives, and was able to get Win98 to install to those from a rescue floppy, but
>not on this HDD. It wont even boot from the other two good  drives. I've tried
>different good memory sticks in one or both of the slots, replaced to 80 pin
>cable and tried different plugs from the power source but to no avail. In the
>BIOS setup, I set the primary controller to auto, but it won't recognize the
>drive(s) and I can't get it to boot from a floppy past the error screen. FDISK
>and format c: from the command prompt (with CD support) are denied. I suspect
>that there is a setting in the BIOS for recognizing the drive parameters that
>is incorrect. If I remove the battery from the board, will it clear the CMOS? I
>don't see any jumpers, and I've been up and down the BIOS settings looking
>for something out of whack and don't see it. Any help would be appreciated, but
>not critical as this will just be a freebie to my daughter to play games on
>(instead of mine)! The other two are gifts to other people.
>


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                       Drew Dunn<[log in to unmask]>