[californiasucksbad]

I had a DELL running on WindowsXP it was a couple years old. It had some spyware and problems and eventually it went to the junk pile, I pulled my hard drive out its a Maxtor 80Gig I beleive. I just snagged my friends old HP which still has WIN 98 on it. I tried hooking up my hard drive, it plugged in fine but im not sure how to get it to recognize it. I went into the computer setup, hooked it up as slave and then master but my skills cant get it working yet... so beginner help is needed. Thanks in advance =)

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There are several issues here. First win98 won't be able to see the files on XP, you will have to use an XP machine. You will need to scan the disk for virus's before you do anything else. When you do put it in another XP machine you will need to take ownership of the files before you can even see them, let alone copy or move them. You might even want to invest in another drive, they're pretty cheap these days, to move your files to. Then you can reinstall XP, or you can install it on the new drive, then move the files. BTW XP doesn't like it when you switch motherboards after installation, unless the two boards have nearly identical chipsets.

[Tyger]

There are several issues here. First win98 won't be able to see the files on XP, you will have to use an XP machine. You will need to scan the disk for virus's before you do anything else. When you do put it in another XP machine you will need to take ownership of the files before you can even see them, let alone copy or move them. You might even want to invest in another drive, they're pretty cheap these days, to move your files to. Then you can reinstall XP, or you can install it on the new drive, then move the files. BTW XP doesn't like it when you switch motherboards after installation, unless the two boards have nearly identical chipsets.

[Kemasa]

I had a DELL running on WindowsXP it was a couple years old. It had some spyware and problems and eventually it went to the junk pile, I pulled my hard drive out its a Maxtor 80Gig I beleive. I just snagged my friends old HP which still has WIN 98 on it. I tried hooking up my hard drive, it plugged in fine but im not sure how to get it to recognize it. I went into the computer setup, hooked it up as slave and then master but my skills cant get it working yet... so beginner help is needed. Thanks in advance =)

The second disk should be a slave, unless you connect it to a second IDE port, often computers have two. It also depends on what else is on the machine and what is connected.

One way to get the data off the disk is to buy a new disk and install it in your Dell, reload XP, then once that is done add the old disk and scan it for virus and other bad things, then copy the data off of it.

Typically XP uses a different type of filesystem than 98 (NTFS vs FAT32), so if it is NTFS you will only be able to access the data on a system which can read that, typically WInXP, but also several versions of Linux can read it. Reading it on Linux is nice since the viruses do not affect it, so you can get off some of the data, but it involves more learning. This means that it will look like the disk does not exist since win98 will not find any partitions with a known filesystem on it.

The first step is to see if you can see the disk through the BIOS, enter setup and check to see if you can see all the IDE devices. There is often a printout of what is found when the machine powers up. If you can not see the disk at that point, you will not be able to see it when the OS loads.

Edited by Kemasa, 22 November 2005 - 09:28 PM.

[Autumn's Daddy]

I don't know if you have managed to get this problem sorted yet, but if you desperately want to get the data off the drive, you could put it into another XP machine and run plenty of anti virus / anti spyware to ensure it's clean.

Then if you copy the data off the drive that you want to keep, you could FDISK it, to remove any sign of the operating system and then format it as FAT32.

Finally, you would then be able to copy your files back onto the disk and install the drive into your Windows98 machine, which would then be able to recognise it.

There's a lot of if's and but's here, but I think you can see the logic.

PM me if you need any help doing any of this.

I am not a member of the staff around here, but I hope I can help.

Autumn's Daddy