Well, here I am again 8 months later and running into problems again. I eventually copied win 98 files on to the C drive as advised and yes, it's wonderful not having to insert the Windows CD every time. I even wrote myself a little check list in a Word doc of what to do when HDD format time came around.
Tonight I formatted the hard drive of my daughter's computer prior to selling it, and do you think I could get those Win98 files to copy to C drive? Baaahhh!!!
My check list said after formatting, make new directory c:win98se, which I did. It then said E: copy Win98*.* C:win98SE.
Up you, said the computer, can't find any such files. Que? said I. Give me a DIR of the contents of the E drive please. Certainly, master, it said, and spat forth about ten directories. Hmm, thought I, directories not files. OK, there is a directory called Win98; perhaps if I copied all its files to C:win98se, that will do? So I did. And it didn't. I still keep getting asked for the Win98 CD to be put in at every possible opportunity.
I am now, as I type this, in the process of doing a drag and drop of every file in the Windows98 CD into c: Win98se. Since it currently shows about an hour to go, I shall ask the question here... will this work or is it a waste of time? Is there some reason why it has to be done before installing Windows?
This is all grist to the mill and I'm quite happy to go through the whole exercise again if necessary, since I haven't installed anything except Windows and a few drivers. Looking back through this thread now, maybe it was the xcopy command that Agent86 recommended that I didn't use that made the difference?
*sigh*
All suggestions gratefully received.