Installed new hard drive, help to load windows 98

T23 Laptop, hard drive failed after erasing XP, New drive installed 40 gig,everything went good, #1, how important is that white paper that sticks to hard drive. #2 I went to install my original Windows 98, and it said that the hard drive was large, asked me if I wanted to set for large harddrive so I said OK. The next screen said there was a problem and going any further would ruin hard drive. I cancelled out and shut down. Is it because there was XP on before?

There may have been a limit as to what size 98 could see but if you have an XP CD, I would use it.

I did some reading and saw a few answers. Some say that Win98 can only support partictions as large as 120gigs or so, which this doesnt seem to be your problem.

Others say, that it is usaly the motherboard your running that cant not handle the larger drives. However, I would imagin that your T23 would handle a 40 gig drive.

I would hope it would run it, I told the sales guy what laptop I was installing hard drive into.

Is there any particular reason why you're set on using Windows 98?

No, that is the only version I have original with the key.

I've yet to meet a sales guy that knew what the hell he was talking about......

I tried to install 98 again from CD drive, It said it had to format hard drive so I hit yes. Than it said Please wait setup is formatting your hard drive.

Than an error message popped up.
"Setup cannot install Win98 on your computer.An error was detected while formatting your primary hard disk partition. Press enter to quit setup".
Did I get a poor drive or is there something i need to install before Windows is loaded.

I think you're wasting your with 98. Try http://www.mininova.com and http://www.isohunt.com for something else.

How safe are these sites? I don't want to download more trouble.

I only used it once and I didn't have a problem.

I would blow the partition using FDISK from the CD and then Reinstall Win98 allowing it to format.