Need help formatting a W2k computer

[Alinestra Covelia]

(Formerly the "Need help formatting a W2k computer" thread.)

I recently rediscovered a crummy old desktop that I used to use a lot. It was my base computer for doing Civ2 scenarios.

I've evacuated all the stuff I want to keep from it to an external hard drive. Now I want to format it. There are two reasons for this:

1. The computer is buggy as hell and I'm sick of Explorer.exe crashes and the fact that it stops responding if you leave it standing for a few hours. Also, the cable modem started to malfunction (the icon showed it was connected but the browser always sodding well timed out, which was useless).

2. The computer has its hard drive partitioned by the previous owner, which was a pain in the arse and which I'd like to correct by removing the partition.


I have a Win2k CD, but that's about it. The previous owner didn't bequeath me anything else. How would I go about formatting this hunkajunk and making it a useful computer once again? I'm hoping to get it running W2k, not XP or anything newer. (The previous owner tried to install XP but it had difficulty.)

Any suggestions will be appreciated, as usual. Thanks in advance!

[snoopy369]

When you go to install W2K, it will prompt you if you want to format the drive; simply say yes. Use NTFS instead of FAT unless you are going to use the drive with Win98 or MacOSX.

IIRC Win2K should also let you decide on the partion. If not, you can do it yourself before you get to that point with the wonderful utility fdisk. Use a guide such as:

http://fdisk.radified.com/

to figure out how to use fdisk if you don't know how.

[Julian Delphiki]

Technology Forum

[Q Classic]

Gentoo Linux.

[Alinestra Covelia]

I did as the CD instructed. Two problems arose:

1. It deleted the partitioned drive space, but did not assign that to C. The 2.6 GB of former partitioned space is now merely "unassigned". How do I get the original C drive to subsume that? C drive currently has 11.7 GB capacity. (It's an old computer.)

2. I told it to format C drive but it did not. There's still a lot of crap on the C drive, meaning that there's only 2.86 GB free. I tried the whole right click and format but that did not work, as it said (perhaps with some justification) that there were at least one program currently using that disk space.

(3. It still won't connect to the internet although I suspect this is because I likely knocked out the modem card drivers while reinstalling?)


What should I do now? I need to merge the unassigned hard disk space to C, and then I need to clear all this crap off C. Again, thanks in advance for your help!

[Aeson]

Delete the C partition as well during setup (booting from the installation CD). It should automatically create a full disk partition if you try to install on a disk with no partitions.

[Alinestra Covelia]

I'm at the Bios-style blue screen for the installation.

It's got the C: NTFS bit and the "Unpartitioned space" bit.

It says I can hit "D" to delete the selected partition.

I highlight C: drive and strike the "D" key, but nothing happens.

Any thoughts?

[Aeson]

Never used Win2k installation... so not sure why that would be. Are you booting off the CD or off the hard disk?

[Alinestra Covelia]

Initially the HD, then put in the CD, then autorun kicks in and it restarts the computer after several clickthroughs.

So... I guess that's a lengthy way of saying it's booting off the CD?

[Alinestra Covelia]

It may be easiest for me to talk to people on IM or something.

I'm "Amazonian_Mage" (note the underscore) at yahoo dot com. Emails could work but I'll be signed in to Yahoo IM for a while.

[Tim_Augustus]

My guess is windows won't let you just format C: drive because the setup routine has located the 'boot sector' there and thus formatting it would stop windows from booting. Since you've only just installed windows on it anyway it'd be easiest to just reinstall windows.



The above screen should appear as the first dialog when installing. All you need to do is select each of the existing partitions and press D to erase them (Setup will ask you to confirm)

Then when there's just a single 'unpartitioned space 16000MB' (or however big your hard drive is, just press enter to install windows on that and that will automatically become C: drive and use the entire space.

EDIT: You posted the rest while I was capturing the screenshot

Strange that you can't use that method to get rid of your partition... Can you use fdisk to do the job?

[Tim_Augustus]

You could try using the linux-based GParted live-cd to do the job - here's a review of it with links. I've never used it but it appears to be a pretty powerful way to delete a partition

A review: http://www.linux.com/articles/53924

The download page:

[DrSpike]

It looks like you are using the win2k tool rather than fdisk. Fdisk is very easy to use - you just tell it to remove the two partititions and create one big one. Then you can format it.

Do you have a bootdisk with fdisk?

[Alinestra Covelia]

Hmmm, well I met with Aeson over IM and we took a stab at the desktop issue together. One thing we are fairly sure about is that I'll need a new W2k disc. My disc was handed down to me by the former owner of the desktop, and it looks very likely that it's not a full reinstall disc - just one of those pared down versions that requires some installation elements to be already preexisting on the HD before it'll work.

We know:

* XP will not work on this computer. Former owner tried it and it ran too slow so she reinstalled W2k.
* My W2k disc is insufficient and I need to get a full copy.
* Until I have something that will boot the CD drive once the HD is wiped, there's no point in trying to departition if that process will wipe both the C and the D drives.

So the first order of the day is to get or buy a copy of W2k :/

[Alinestra Covelia]

Just compared a few prices. The computer cost me $100 when I bought it second hand back in 2002. Most legit copies of W2k are going for about $141 or so. I fail to see the economic benefit in paying the computer's price... and more... just to get it working again.

Furthermore there are several W2k computers for sale on ebay and Craigslist for well under $100.

At this point I've evacuated most of the stuff off the hard drive and I'm seriously thinking of junking this box and getting another one, unless anybody has any heroic last-minute ideas.