Sounds like at best, the partitions are corrupt more likely, the drive itself has died & gone to heaven.

What does Scandisk report?

Sounds like you have lost all of your data already correct?

If this is a case I would put the windows xp CD into the drive and boot from it, and see what it says. If it doesn't find everything I would try deleting all partitions that exist and try creating a new one and see if it will create a new one the size of the hard drive and format it...

Hope you can get a running PC soon!

Good luck!

Done correctly, (follow the directions?), I've found the WinXP CD is pretty useful at setting up a drive, it's quick and relatively easy. It's not as cumbersome as the old fdisk utility that was used in win'98.

Are the other partitions NTFS format? If so, I don't think win'98 will read them.

Recovery? Try slaving the drive to another PC, (winXP), and see if it can be read.

A bad CDROM drive in the IDE pool can cause erratic behaviour like this. Try disconnecting all other IDE devices and see what happens.

Virus attack is possible, but the drive may be nearly dead with intermittent errors.

Although I used to use dual boot options for win'98 and winXP, I have found things seem a lot more stable using WinXP exclusively.

I don't understand what you did with Zonealarm..... which only loads when an operating system has booted.
Did you load WinXP from windows '98?

In any case, I make sure the system cannot access the internet until the operating system and most software is installed, including security software such as Zonealarm, (which I am particularly fond of due to it's effectiveness).

Attempt to block any automatic internet traffic whatsoever by disabling auto updating throughout your system, from anti-virus to op sys. Better to update manually if you must at all, then you know there if a problem if you see programs attempting to access the web, (usually Zonealarm will warn you as long as you set your permissions manually).

I even use Zonealarm's privacy settings to BLOCK Zonealarm from accessing it's OWN website, which I'm pretty sure it STILL does, even if you disable it's updating and other contact options.

I'm sorry Luke,

I'm still confused about why Zonealarm was running during the XP installation.

If the "startup" option is enabled in ZA, it means it loads during the Op Sys load, not at PC post or "bootup".

If you insert the WinXP disc and boot from that, then ZA or  any other software on your hard drive will not load at all, the system boots from CDROM and XP setup starts running. (as long as you have CDROM as boot priority in BIOS)

I certainly was not implying the PC was connecting to the internet before windows loads. At the end of the WinXP setup installation, Windows asks if you wish to connect to the internet NOW, and prompts for you to set up a connection, that's what I was refering to.

Also, and my memory is dull on this point, I remember reading about a particular problem with Win XP when it initially accesses the net, though I can't recall the details now. It may have had something to do with Slipstreaming Xp, not sure.

Back to the dual boot question.....

As I said before, I used to use dual boot. After my WinXP system failed several times, (usually due to overclocking experiments), I was NEVER able to restore it, relying on the '98 op sys as you currently are.

Honestly, it was a real pain in the butt having to re-install my Win XP all the time.

Ever since I stopped using dual boot and 2 windows versions, I have had no problems at all with WinXP (SP2) stability.

It is much better to invest in a second hard drive (they are cheap) and load an op sys on that drive as well as back up your important data, (like a copy of FS9's game folder for example), than to run a dual boot system on a single hard drive.

If your primary system fails for any reason, the spare drive can be switched to become the primary boot drive, and the failed drive can then be dealt with at leisure and tested and backed up if possible from the reserve drive and op sys.

Please consider disconnecting all other IDE devices as I said before, it's the first step to accurate diagnosis and eliminates all IDE configuration problems outside the suspect drive.

A dead drive often works fine....... and then suddenly fails....... works fine....... suddenly fails......etc...etc.

The win'98 startup disk has a dos program on it called "fdisk", it's the partitioning utility but it's very slow and a bit tricky as it takes a few attempts to do it properly usually, until you get the hang of it.

To use it, boot from floppy startup disc and type   fdisk   at the prompt... ie

>fdisk

The winXP install disk has a much better interface built in and it's as good and easy as any utils available for setting up hard drives.

All you do is boot from the WinXP CDROM and start the WinXP installation process. After a few screens you will see (if you watch the options carefully) the partitioning and formatting options....... just follow the prompts and enter the partition information you require.

Next, use the formatting option screen that comes up to format C: drive, as soon as the format is complete, Windows begins to load, and you have to wait until you are in windows to format any additional partitions I believe.

Doing the partitioning with the WinXP install disk is pretty fast as an added bonus.

My seagate hard drives can be stubborn when brand new and I sometimes need to use the Seagate util called Disk Wizard to activate a drive. It's a free util and can be downloaded. It works with other brand drives that i've tried, but it complains that you are using an unsupported drive and they take no responsibility .. blah blah....

Disk Wizard has a couple quirks, but once you get around them, (easy enough), the partitioning and formatting could not be simpler or faster. It shows a pie chart of your drive and you add slices of pie as your partition sizes are shown in megabytes. You can tweak cluster size if you wish or leave it at it's logical defaults. Select FAT or NTFS for the partitions and then press the GO button when you have the drive set up the way you like, seconds later.... it's all done and formatted, amazing!

Disk Wizard comes in two formats, a Windows version and a floppy disk version. I keep both in my toolbox.
------------------------

I can't remember exactly how I added my XP op sys to create a dual boot system, but I remember '98 had to be on there first, then I think I ran WinXP setup from within win'98 as you are doing. It would be better if XP were installed from booting up the CD, but I can't remember if it's possible to get a dual boot system that way. In any case, I'm over that now and won't ever go back to using win'98. (though my XP is very Win'98ish    )

You say you never had the service packs. Well, I actually downloaded SP2 (it's all you'll ever need) on my dialup..... yup, it was a 2 week marathon affair but I got it here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=049C9DBE-3B8E-4F30-8245...

This is the complete SP2, no auto updating for this baby!
Burn it to disk and keep it safe. As soon as Win XP is up and running, apply SP2 and don't save any backup files. (it will save files anyway, and clutter the drive with a bit of useless backups that can be deleted!)

The reason for applying SP2 is simple...... it's secure and stable, incorporating several years of updates, patches etc, but it's really a new Op Sys with most of the bugs of WinXP sorted out. I used SP2 beta for a long time until the official version came out, and it too was very good.

If you are really into your op sys tweaking, (or even if you aren't and just want a new, one step installation disk), then check out this tiny utilility that revolutionises WinXP and SP2 into a slipstreamed, customised and personal Win XP install disk. It's called nlite and it's awesome, extremely powerful, easy to use and has the ability to hack Win XP to pieces if you want!

I've been using several versions of nlite for about a year. It is still in developement, but it's beta status is due to it's complexity and compatibility with several op sys's, and in no way reflects any shortcomings as far as the average user is concerned.

Check it out here:

http://www.nliteos.com/

Cheers

MBR bootloader has been messed up (overwritten by some Win98 tools)

the pointer that tells the BIOS to get the XP partition started (AKA NTLDR and it's stuff) has been overwritten with the default one for Win98 (IO.sys, MSDOS.sys)

You need a replacement bootloader to get the ting to boot from the XP partition again

http://btmgr.webframe.org/

is free and could help you out.

No warranties

NTFSDos (http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/ntfsdos.shtml) can be used to check if the XP partitions still exist if they are NTFS

http://btmgr.webframe.org/3.6/sbminst.exe
is the file you need

Install instructions
http://btmgr.webframe.org/index.php3?body=docs/user-guide-3.html

print when needed (most likely install to drive 128 (HD1))