bad sectors in new drives

Can you tell us more about how you are installing these drives, and setting them up for OS load?

Basically, what steps did you take from the time you took the drive out of the static wrap, til BSOD.

Sawgle, you haven't ruin any drives yet!

Tell me how you are setting up this system, spell out the procedure you are using, and I'll walk you through the problem.
Dennis

I had this problem with other Diamond stealth cards. Win98 setup can't use these cards as standard VGA.

for eliminating this problem you should install your OS wit another simlpe VGA card. After finishing installation, change your VGA card with your stealth II 540s.

Next time you get that message power off the machine, disconnect the cdrom drive and Win 98 will continue and complete the install.  I had exactly the same problem last weekend on another machine.  I not completely sure of the cause but this will let Win 98 complete the install.  Once Win 98 is installed reconnect the cdrom, reboot the machine and it will detect the cdrom drive, install the drivers and you will be in business.

Oops.  After you disconnect the cdrom drive you need to turn it back on so it will complete the installation of Win 98.

try to use norton disk doctor to fix your Harddisk. If really cannot fix the bad sectors than you better use FDISK to partition your bad sectors. It's a only way you can use your HDD smoothly. If can bring your HDD go to repair.

Cedric80, you are obviously new to this site, and with that welcome. However, we do observe a protocol here that requires that you post comments in lieu of an answer when posting suggestions or a guess as you have. By blocking the question with a suggestion as you have, other techs cannot view it as an open issue and add their input. Your cooperation would be appreciated.

Sawgle, kindly reject the proposed answer to reopen this question! Thanks

Verify that your CMOS is recognizing the drive properly.  If it is not, correct it, and re-Fdisk, and Format the drive.

Where exactly is the system craching?

I just used MAX-BLAST that came with my new drive to set the drive up. Went through win 98 install with out any problems until it was setting up the hardware. It asked for the drivers for the Cannon BJC-5000 printer I had connected but not turned on. (which I thought was strange with it now being turned on). So I put in the disk and it proceded to copy the files needed to set it up including the additional software that is on the disk. Half way through loading the software the blue screen of death popped up and said unable to write to disk C: some data or files may be lost. I hit enter and it started copying files again but the screen popped up a couple more times.
Then I was asked to restart the computer and when it restarted scandisk started running again and switched to surface scan and reported 24 bad sectors. I had set it up once last night with the diamond stealth video card last night and loaded everything OK right up until I was loading the drivers and software and then got the same blue screen. I run scandisk after that and didn't detect anything bad in the drive till I reformatted and reprogrammed today. I have done 25 or 30 computers before and never ran across anything like. This is the first time using a diamond stealth card.
Thanks
Fred

Fred, two things:

1. Reject the proposed answer to reopen the question and you'll get moew activity here.

2. How old is the motherboard bios?

Still having the same problem.
Bios is AWARD date 1998. Shoyld be good for large drives

Fred, when you boot into the Bios setup, is the bios recognizing the drive correctly? I could also be a bad drive though too!

I have noticed that the closest to my dive was the normal setting. LBA and Large were not as close according to the information I got off from MAXDIAG
26310
16
63
Normal read 26309 and all else was the same. I beleive normal is not for win 98. With this bios I don't think I should have to use drive limits.
Thanks
Fred

Fred, dos that bios's drive recognition have a "auto" as a choice? If so, use it. If you choose to use the disk parameters for recognition, they can't be close, they have to be dead on!

If your BIOS does not have Auto as a selection, first look for an updated BIOS from the manufacturer.  There should at least be a Custom, or User selection that you can configure yourself.  You would then need to get the exact Head, Cylinder, Sector count for the drive.

Note:  If "close" is the best you can do, you can set the BIOS to the closest setting that is available without going over the Head, Cylinder, Sector count.  Then you would need to re-Fdisk, and Format the drive.  This should not be the case unless the system is quite old.  Auto, or User is prefered.

I like all of the possible solutions but have tried all at one time or another. I tried and old trick that don't make any sense. It usaully works when loading win 98 on older motherboards. I loaded win 95 first, then upgraded to win 98, then upgraded to win 98 second edition. This seems to be working. Now I just can't get the win 98 to soft power off. Be glad when I get rid of this system. Thanks

Does it just hang Fred?

The monitor shuts down but the computer does'nt. Tried a new mother board and everything works fine. Suspect motherboard may be faulty.
Fred

Thanks