Windows ME Setup freezes when formatting the HDD at 1%

[Koen_01]

Hi. The clue is in the title really. Every time I try and install Windows ME to my computer, when it gets to the formatting hard disk stage, it starts formatting then the whole computer just freezes when it gets to 1%.

 

[Deleted member 1898488]

what brand/model is it? how big is the HDD?

 

[Koen_01]

The PC is an Advent T9100 with a 160 GIG HDD.

 

[Alabalcho]

I am not sure the MS-DOS part of Windows ME supports very large disks (and 160gb was "very large" twenty years ago).
- boot your WinME into DOS
- execute FDISK, and see what is seen

If you can't see the whole capacity, you might try something else:
- boot modern OS on that PC
- create single primary partition of like 2gb, and make it bootable
- try re0installting WinME

 

[Koen_01]

The pc isn't capable of running any os past windows XP, and I HATE windows XP. It currently doesn't have an os on. So I'll try that and see what it does.

 

[Deleted member 1898488]

yes, install windows on an ~8GB or less partition, but once the OS is installed you can format the rest. Just DON'T HAVE A SINGLE PARTITION LARGER THAN 137GB, (you'll need to make two then) and you'll be just fine.
also 1gb of memory you have *may* cause issues. if you still have troubles, drop it down to 512mb if possible or its possible there's a bios option to do that as well.

 

[Koen_01]

How can I do this if there is currently no os on the machine? I don't have another PC I can format the HDD with. Plus I'm sure there is an option in windows me setup in which you can enable large disk support, I just can't get that far because it formats the disk first.

 

[Alabalcho]

You can download and burn eg FreeDOS. From there, start FDISK, clear your disk, create single small partition, make it active. Restart WinME setup, choose custom installation.

WinME was released back in 2000. By that time, largest hard drive were in 10-20GB range. Your 160GB must be supported by the BIOS as well.

 

[Koen_01]

Well, it was a Windows XP machine, but i can't stand that version of Windows which is why I'm trying to get ME on it.

 

[Deleted member 1898488]

theres no option in windows setup to enable large disk support. the best you could do is ultra ATA drivers later on, but if the boot partition is larger than 137GB (higher than 32-bit LBA) corruption may still occur.
download freedos like he says and format a ~8GB or less partition using fdisk and then later on you can format the rest using windows ME's built-in fdisk.

 

[Koen_01]

theres no option in windows setup to enable large disk support.

Yes there is. After it formats the disk, setup checks the disk and determines whether the disk is larger than a gigabyte, and if it is, it asks you if you want to use large disk support. This applies to only windows me or earlier.

 

[Deleted member 1898488]

Well yes. But that is a relative term. If the disk is larger than 512mb, it uses "large" disk support. But it's not the 48 bit lba you need.
If you manually format the drive in setup at least, this also appears in Windows 2000 and XP installation.