OK, I've been able to fdisk and format my hard drive (a couple of times). Then, I seem to successfully load win98. However, and here's the problem, after I turn off the laptop and/or reboot for whatever reason, I get a message saying that there's no bootable sector on the hard drive; F1 to try again or F2 for setup. Finally, not being able to get anything to work, I'm forced to start from the beginning again, using a bootable floppy.
In terms of a virus, how can there be a virus when the hard drive is repartitioned and reformatted? Isn't that the purpose of a clean install? In any event, how can I use virus checking software when I don't have reliable access to windows or, for that matter, to the hard drive? Does such software exist?
Finally, I've run scandisk after successfully (but temporarily) installing win98 and the hard drive seems fine.
If anyone can make sense of all of this, please advise.
Many TIA,
Mark