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[ The PC Guide | Troubleshooting and Repair Guide | The Troubleshooting Expert | Troubleshooting Specific Components | Troubleshooting Hard Disk Drives | Windows Issues ]

I am running Windows 95 OEM SR2 but my hard disk isn't using FAT32. Isn't FAT32 part of Windows 95 OEM SR2?

Explanation:

 Windows 95 OEM SR2 is installed, which allows the use of FAT32 partitions, but after installing it, the system still appears to be using the older FAT (FAT16) disk volumes.

Diagnosis:

 FAT32 is a disk format, and while support for it is part of Windows 95 OEM SR2, this does not mean your disk volumes automatically are always going to be FAT32 just because you are running OSR2. You must use the correct tools and create FAT32 volumes if you want to use them, or convert your existing FAT16 volumes to FAT32.

Recommendation:
  • Make sure that you really do have OEM SR2 installed. See this procedure for instructions on checking the Windows 95 version.
  • See this section on the tradeoffs in using FAT32.
  • When running Windows 95 OEM SR2, make sure you use the correct version of FDISK, the one that came with the operating system. Any older versions do not know about FAT32 at all.
  • If you have upgraded an existing system then you will need to either repartition the existing disk volumes using FDISK to make them FAT32, or convert them. Partition Magic is a utility that will do this conversion for you; conversion is not supported natively in Windows 95 because OEM SR2 was designed only to be installed on new PCs (thus the name "OEM").
  • Remember that the FDISK program that supports FAT32 only enables the support for partitions that are greater than 512 MB in size. If you run FDISK in a system that has only hard disks under 512 MB in size, they will not be formatted using FAT32. There is no practical need to use FAT32 for drives this small.

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