Hard Disk Drive got Locked

[Coldman]

I am stuck with this bios locked problem on the HDD drive. i have a quantum fireball 260 gb, and it has windows 98 operating system installed on it, i tried to remove this os and then format it, but i am not able to do it. I am not getting what is wrong with this hdd.

Please provide some help regarding this

[Hardwareman]

If you have your operating system disc. Then insert it in the cd drive and start up. You may have to change your BIOS to have it start from the CD drive. Allow your cd to run for a few minutes. Eventually it will stop and ask you if you want to load the operating system or if you want to repair it. Choose repair. That will fix your problem and allow you to get into Windows.

[Maxforu]

If you want to install XP, you'll need the OS CD. An upgrade CD won't cut it. If you want to install 98, you'll need to remove the partitions first if they are NTFS.

Win98 will not work because it doesn't reconize a NTFS drive.

Boot the XP ugrade CD and do a 'Repair Install'.

How to do a 'Repair' install

If you want to install a fresh copy of XP, you 'can' do it with an upgrade CD. You just need a win98 install CD to prove prior ownership of windows. During the install you will be asked to insert the win98 CD.

[Killen]

You do not need to reinstal 98 first.

If the repair option suggested by aegis doesn't work and you want to do a format & reinstal then I favour using a bootfloppy with DELPART to delete the current partition.

Next, boot up using the Upgrade install disk.
When you get to the part about prior qualifying product simply remove the XP CD and insert the old 98 instal CD. Once setup recognizes the old disk, reinsert the XP CD and continue a normal clean installation.

[T.J.]

I have found, 98 percent of the time, when an OS installation hangs, it is because of hardware (PCI card, modem, other device).

When you pull the PCI cards, and set the BIOS back to defaults (or disable extra PCI hardware in the BIOS) things usually work fine.

I disabled SATA legacy in the BIOS. This initialized the BIOS to fool XP into running the Hard Drive as AN IDE. All is well.