You finished FDISK and have REBOOTED.
You are ready to format the drives.

Here is something I highly recommend you do... a general TIP.
When you are going to format, you better first run a dir command against the driveletters you intend to format.
For instance
dir C: /w /o /p
This way you can look if it really is the drive you want to format.
Once you are sure, you can format C:
Similarly, For drive E:
dir E: /w /o /p
Check it out, before you run format E:

Believe me, you better take these extra steps since you do not want to format a hard-drive or partition containing data you want to keep.

(TIP; you can add the line set DIRCMD=/w /o /p /a in autoexec.bat on the booter you use! When you do this, and you run DIR C: it will then function as if you typed the switches as well.)

Okay?
let's proceed.

After fdisk and the REQUIRED reboot, you really should check content of the driveletter before you format it.
dir C: /w /o /p (If empty, it will give an error.)
format C:

when format finishes, you can give the "drive" a meaningful name (label), or just hit enter..
if you give it a label, DO NOT CALL IT DOS nor WINDOWS

dir D: /w /o /p (If empty, it will give an error. However, if it shows data, you found out why I ask to do that...)
if empty.
format D:

dir E: /w /o /p (Honest, you better check...)
format E: (if you need to)

IMPORTANT, after formating, REBOOT

You are ready to run setup.

Run smartdrv (Well, I hope you put it on the bootdisk, it speeds up things.)

Put windows cdrom in tray, and fire away
(this is for win98)

D:
md win98
cd win98
copy :\win98\*.*

(this copies the windows setup files and cabinets to hard drive)

setup

Personally, I think it is better to copy the "cabinet" files onto another partition or hard drive.
(Just as long as it is on a drive-letter you can access...)
to put them on C: you start that sequence with
C:
md win98 etc..

You may have noticed I don't have you do format C: /s
Please, if you can avoid it, don't use the /s switch.
Let Windows setup create the system files for you.

(By the way, drive manufactor drivepreparation tools and overlay creation tools will ask for a system floppy with the boot system of the windows version you intend to use, and thus C: is made bootable. That's one more case in which you have to make sure the floppy has the correct version.)

Oh, there are times you may need to use an other format option switch at times. The /u or unconditional format switch.
format C: /u
Why?
- When the new system you are going to set up is another version of windows than you used before...
- Or when Fdisk version was different than the one it was fdisked with before you started..
- Or the hard disk came from another machine (differences in BIOS)...
Then you may actually NEED that unconditional switch to clean off the old FAT copies.
And folks, that can happen even after you used wipeout or manufactor disktools.
It's rare, but it happens. I have seen it happen, and I know the /U switch still has its meaning.

I can repeat a tip.
But, of course, you can set dircmd=/w /o /p /a from the prompt too.

Sidenote;
If the drive-letter is on a hard drive that has been properly done before, and you want to re-format it real fast.
dir <letter>:
format <letter>: /q

/Q for Quickformat
/U for unconditional. (You can believe me when I tell you this switch still has a function.)

Another few sidenotes.
I am well aware you don't always need to run fdisk before you (re-)format a drive...

If you want to run windows setup on a new hard disk, I should also tell you that you ought to disable the motherboard antivirus feature in BIOS setup.

With used drives, there is more to this!
To explain;
Suppose you want to run setup on a used drive, and have to reformat it. Now suppose that that hard disk had a antivirus program running, which loaded a boot sector protector.
Then you could get into trouble if you do NOT disable the BIOS AV.
You see, TWO such services can prevent a normal setup.
I know, you click Continue to that warning message, but it is (sorta) on top of the other, see...

There are rare cases where you cannot disable onboard AV, and it can prevent setup to "systemise" the drive.
in these cases, you use setup /ir
This /ir switch tells Windows Setup not to attempt to write to the boot sector. This should only be used when the anti-virus protection in CMOS cannot be disabled. Your computer will not reboot at the end of setup. You must boot using the Startup disk, SYS your hard drive, then boot normally to allow Setup to finish.

Now, in some cases where a remnant of an Antivirus program loads from MBR, I have found that fdisk /mbr gets rid of it.
HOWEVER! It is usually sufficient to disable the mobo AV, IF YOU PLAN on using the very same ANTIVIRUS program.
After all, fdisk /mbr is not without dangers...

Special Features and programs like antivirus and goback should be completely disabled before you run a repair setup over an existing windows installation.
(if you ever did an over the top, in conditions like these, you will know how many error messages you saw.)