I can't do much of anything with the computer. When I click on anything on the desktop, it gives an error and the computer locks up forcing me to restart it. And when I choose things from the start menu it locks up sometimes too. I just want to delete everything off of the hard drive and start over and reinstall everything. Can anyone tell me how to do that? Thanks.

I am assuming you have your windows 98 cd. All you have to do is put it in the hard drive and reboot the computer. You need to make sure your Bios are set to boot off CD before HDD. Then windows 98 setup should start. One feature of windows 98 is you can reinstall the OS without reformating and loosing everything. But if you truely do want to reformate, just follow the instructions.

My previous post might be wrong. I was talking to a friend that needs to find a windows 2000 cd so he can reformat his HDD. I have not delt with windows 98 much, sorry if I was wrong.

1/ Backup any data you need to CD-ROMS if possible

2/ Download drivers for your components from the mfg's websites if possible & burn them to CD-ROM's or copy to floppys. You can also still use any original driver CD's if you can't download new one's. I would also suggest downloading DirectX 8.0a or 9.0b both if possible, the reason I suggest this is that if your able to download a new driver for your video card it likely won't install without one of the newer DirectX versions installed first.

3/ Make a bootdisk, test it by rebooting with it in floppy drive before continuing, making sure you can get to the A:\ prompt (shift+F5 once it loads & the 30sec countdown screen appears). Confirm that Fdisk & Format are both on this bootdisk, by either viewing the contents in Explorer or typing either at the A:\ prompt.

4/ If the bootdisk works & your sure you've got all the data you need off the drive (all favorites & email addresses), it's time to use it.

5/ Reboot with bootdisk & get to the A:\ prompt

6/ Type fdisk & select #4 to view partition info, this is to confirm whether you have any extended partitions or just a primary partition.

IMPORTANT!!!!
"If you have a extended partition you'll need to delete the logical DOS drives within the extended partition first, then delete the extended partition & after that the primary partition. It must be deleted in this order."

If you only have a primary partition you can just delete it.

7/ Once partitions are deleted choose #1 create DOS partition or logical drives, you'll want to make a primary partition (if you want more than 1 partition this is when you can make that choice) choose full size or change to some other amount in MB's or % if you want to make more than one partition.

8/ Now choose #2 to make your primary partition active, very important if you want to boot your OS from this harddrive.

8/ Now reboot (esc back to A:\ prompt & reset your PC leaving bootdisk in floppy)

9/ Once bootdisk loads get to the A:\ prompt & type "format c:/s", this will format & load system files, once done formating you'll need to reboot again.

10/ Put your 98 CD in CD-ROM drive while rebooting, it will either auto start or you'll need to get to the A:\ prompt.
If 98 doesn't auto start then at the A: prompt type "D:" which should be your CD-ROM letter, & then just type "setup.exe" at the D:\> prompt.

Been a while since I installed 98 but that should be all, it's really very easy. Fdisking & reformating is the only way to get a clean install for any & all Windows OS's including XP.

If you must reload Windows over top of an existing version only do so as a temp measure to allow yourself to backup any data from the drive, once backups are done fdisk & format the harddrive. These types of installs rarely fix the problems which caused you to reinstall in the first place, further corruption of the OS is the usuall results.