Help an old badger !

[throdgrain]

Other interesting things I want to know about, like how do you reformat yer hard drive ?
Silly question ? Well no not really, as Ive never had to do it. Is it different for W98 than for XP ?
The reasons I ask are because a) I may need to know for my present lovely pc what I got, and b) because Im thinking of buying one of them barebones shuttle doobris, and putting my old xp 2.0 cpu in it, together with an old hard drive currently in a win 98 machine. So, I take the win 98 hard drive, plug it into the shuttle with the Xp.20 and turn it on, it says what ? Presumably the 98 hard drive currently has the drivers loaded on it for some Pentium 2 board, and wont like that too much. So I assume I have to wipe it before removeing it from the old machine ? Or do I ?
Oh , and GWD, yes m8, I do have more money than sense, your right mate

 

[Wilier]

Im assuming you want to reformat the whole drive Throd? If so, then I would boot from a '98 floppy, then format c: from the DOS prompt.

Simple really.

 

[throdgrain]

What does that mean ??

 

[darthshearer]

You want to start fresh? I.e nothing on the HD?

Well like willer says put in a WIN'98 Bootdisk.

a:\format c:

AndTre bons as the french would say

 

[pcg79]

Thats très bons - and they'd actually probably say Voila! .

 

[(Shovel)]

I've just taken you through the creation of a boot disk method, and then remembered that you *may* be able to boot the same DOS prompt if you put the Windows 98 CD in the drive when you boot up. However, this is dependent on your old computer supporting bootable CDs, which it may not.

You *can* however, move the drive to the new computer first, then start up, put your Win98 CD in and you'll get the menu described furthur down. If messing with floppy disks isn't to your taste, do this instead, and rejoin the method at the point marked "***"


To go with a floppy boot disk, and format on the old Pentium 2 system you mentioned:

The boot disk: For windows 98 this is a toughie, cause I can't remember where the "make boot disk" button is... I believe that you will find it: Control Panel -> Add Remove Programs. Then there is a "Start Up Disk" tab - or words to that effect. You a click a "Create" button and you now have yourself a boot disk.

***Put this in and reboot, you'll get a prompt that says "Start Computer with CD ROM support", "Start Computer without CD ROM support", and one other option I think. You may as well choose "without" since it loads quicker.

From here you will be taken to the A: prompt (DOS Prompt, A:\>). (Or CDROM drive if you booted from CD, it doesn't matter where you are).
We're assuming that this old hard drive is only in one partition, (e.g. it only has a "C:" drive, and there aren't extra drive letters that appeared in Windows when you only had one hard drive).
Type: "format c:". This formats the drive marked as c:. You'll get a little percentage ticker going along the bottom. When that reaches 100% you're done

Switch off, remove the drive, stick it in the shuttle and boot from the Windows 98 CD ROM.
----------------------------------------------------
A few notes:
o If the drive is in multiple partitions, e.g. you have a D: and an E: as well as C:, you either need to format all three to leave it as it is, with that layout, or you need to fdisk to change the partition table. *If* you want to do that, come back and someone can tell you, I wont try cause I think I've left the "what to do" quite simple, I don't want to confuse it with other games.

o You might that running scandisk /f is a good idea. It scans the disk completely and marks bad sectors. I *think* that format pays some attention to this. If someone could confirm that a) it does and b) I've got the /f switch right for doing a "full" (thorough) scan. You may also wish to do this after you have formatted, before you install the OS, to be safe.

And that's probabably it!

I hope that helps.

 

[Wilier]

Originally posted by throdgrain
What does that mean ??

Sounds like Shovel has it covererd, but in case he dosnt......

Basically Throd, DL a '98 boot disk from here and save it to a floppy disk.
Start up the machine you want to format with the floppy in the drive, enter your BIOS (press DEL usually) and make sure that your first boot seek is from the floppy (this is usually the default selection). When you save the BIOS, the machine will re-boot from the floppy disk.
At the a: prompt, type "format c:" (no quotes) and enter. The machine will ask you a couple of questions and off you go.

Depending on the size of the drive, it could take quite a while.

 

[Mellow-]

Or you could just use the XP CD to boot the machine, remove all the partitions, make one new one, set it as active and let it to it's thingy stuff.

 

[kameleon]

The other option is to not bother formatting the drive until it's in the new box.

To do this:

1 Install the HDD in the new box
2 After setting the drive up in bios save the configuration and exit
3 The machine will reboot - hold down the ctrl key or the f8 key and you will get the win98 menu boot option.

4 Select boot into command prompt

5 Type format c: /s


voila!

None of this is necessary if you are installing XP from a bootable CD as the option to format is part of the setup process anyway.

 

[Testin da Cable]

I like that thingy stuffing idea tbh

 

[PR.]

Gah, most of those methods are for old foggie IT users

1) Go into the bios and make sure CD-ROM is the first boot device
2) Stick the 2K/XP CD in and restart the machine
3) After the bios is done and before Windows loads you might get "Press a key to boot from CD" do so
4) You will be prompted with the normal 2K/XP setup follow the instructions until you are prompted to select an install partition make sure you delete all the partitions.
5) Create a new partition and install to it...

Done....

 

[throdgrain]

Its gunna be for win 98 though I think.
Btw , thanks for all the replies so far chaps

 

[Wilier]

Originally posted by PR.
Gah, most of those methods are for old foggie IT users

who you callin an old foggie (fogey?)

 

[Mellow-]

Originally posted by Testin da Cable
I like that thingy stuffing idea tbh

*giggles* Wellllllllll, it sounded ok to me!

 

[Lester]

I love my Win98 SE boot disc. Deeply. It's like the Aspirin of PCs.