help! win98: "Error Loading OS"

I have a 6gig drive that im trying to install Windows 98 on. This drive is going to be put in an old old IBM aptiva computer which i cant do the install on cause it keeps freezing. So i take the drive and slap it in on one of my newish computers. In WindowsXP, in the storage utlitiy i reformated the drive to be Fat32.

I have a Windows 98 comp that i reformat every so often (just by poping in the bootable 98cd and choosing format & install) and it always works. I slap this drive in its place do the same reformat and install as always and i get an "error loading os" error when it goes to boot the drive (happens on any comp i slap it into). What could be wrong? I've reformated and reinstalled several times no luck.

If i set the drive with the error as a slave and boot the computer the drive shows up fine and i can read/write/delete files just fine, scandisk shows no errors or anything and it appears that all the Windows files are installed.

Thanks for your help!

**please only post realvant information, if you dont want to help me please dont post anything (as opposed to filling this thread with "use the search button" posts)**

Do you have an active partition on the drive?

I'd fdisk the drive and make sure your partition is active before you start the installation of win98.

Good luck!

In XP i went to that storage utility and i right clicked on the drive and deleted the current partition and then i said create new partiton chose Basic, then i chose to format it as a Fat32 drive with.

Windows actually installs on the drive, and i can see it if i put the drive in as a slave and browse it, just whenever the drive goes to boot off the 6giger it gives me that "error loading os" message.

Some older computers will boot to the Win98 CD and format/install just fine.
Others simply won’t do it giving the error you described.
You will need a Win98 boot disk.
Remember to change the boot order to boot to floppy first.
Good luck!

well i got the drive to boot, but when i put it in the old machine i got a disk I/O error so gonna try to do the reformat from that machine.

I did the fdisk old style partition and format and then when the os went to install it didnt work. After reformating it again it suddenly worked and installed perfectly.

i now have the drive hooked up to the old ibm machine trying to reformat it there. Thanks for the help guys!