Win2K Help

[~Lazarus~]

Guys,

Bit the bullet and installed Win2K Pro, OVERWRITING the Windows ME on my system.

Seem to have screwed it up :

1. It seems, when I boot up, I have 3 options to boot into :

Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional
Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional
Microsoft Windows

Looks like I have created a Tri Boot system (Windows option takes me back to WinME)

2. When I boot to Windows 2000 (using option 1 above) it takes me into Windows 2000 but when I check the disk space on C:\, I find that it is only a 15GB disk (it should be a 20GB)

When I converted from WinME to 2000, I converted from FAT to NTFS and also converted the system restore space to ntfs.

If anyone has any clues to get back to 1 bootup option on a 20gb disk, please advise.

 

[~Lazarus~]

Just discovered where the "lost" diskspace went.

Turns out I have a partition on my disk - or at least an "unallocated" section of 4.69GB

any hints to what I can do to remove the partition / merge to one big block ?

 

[Summo]

If you're successfully able to boot up into Windows ME I would guess that your 'unallocated space' is your old system partition and that you haven't upgraded Windows ME, just installed 2000 alongside it.

You can check this out. In your C: drive could you let us know whether you have two folders, WINDOWS and WINNT, assuming that for each install you allowed the default installation folder.

Personally, I would strongly consider repartioning your entire disk and reinstalling Windows 2000 to a completely bare system. I'm uncomfortable with old operating system files kicking about and prefer a nice clean, fresh install.

If this is too much hassle you can simply delete your old WINDOWS folder or partition and use a proggy like PartitionMagic to resize your partition to use the full available space.

 

[~Lazarus~]

Originally posted by Summo

You can check this out. In your C: drive could you let us know whether you have two folders, WINDOWS and WINNT, assuming that for each install you allowed the default installation folder.

Correct Summo.

Windows and WINNT bot exist on the disk.

any way I can "Clean" the disk without external proggies which I dont have

 

[Summo]

Deleting the old WINDOWS folder will get rid of the old WinME OS, and will leave your system as clean as can be.

You can then manually remove the option to boot into WinME by editing the boot.ini file on the root of C: and simply deleting the line that refers to 'Microsoft Windows' You may also be able to remove the duplicate entry you have, but make sure the two are identical before you remove one. This file is a hidden, read-only system file.

I still recommend booting from your Win2000 CD, deleting the existing partitions and starting again, but your choice. Dunno whether you have any backups of your data.

I'm not aware of any third-party utilities around for clearing out old OS files.

Good luck, my son...

 

[Wilier]

Boot from an ME start-up floppy, run fdisk, re-partition your drive, format, install win2k.

Problem solved.

If you need to hang-on to some data, wack another hdd in (ive got a spare if ya want it!!), transfer the files over, or burn them to cd. Either way, you'll need to reinstall all your software.

 

[MYstIC G]

Originally posted by Summo
Deleting the old WINDOWS folder will get rid of the old WinME OS, and will leave your system as clean as can be.

^ never do that, merged program files directoriess, etc. Its not worth it & just makes a mess.

Just wipe the partitions & run win2k install from your bootable CD, that way you'll have a real NTFS partition (WinME wouldnt run if it had already been converted afaik).

 

[Summo]

Originally posted by Wilier
Boot from an ME start-up floppy, run fdisk, re-partition your drive, format, install win2k.

No need! Booting from Win2000 CD will let you do all that.

 

[stu]

Format and Reinstall

 

[Dimebag]

Deleting the old WINDOWS folder will get rid of the old WinME OS, and will leave your system as clean as can be.

Apart from what it stores in c:\ c:\temp c:\program files\ etc etc...

And you'd still have the option to boot on the boot menu except it would just error hideously and do nothing.

Just format the disk and reinstall windows 2000.

Dime

 

[Embattle]

I agree with the format and reinstall method.

 

[~Lazarus~]

Guys,

Thanks for the assist. I am almost there.

Unfortunately, not without a price.

Before I upgraded, I scoured the HDD and copied EVERYTHING that I thought I might need onto a PD (like a 1.44 floppy, except its a 650mb optical disc)

Struggled throught the upgrade (found an old Win98 bootup disk and ran fdisk from there) Created Win2k bootup disks and FINALLY managed to bet my 20gb HDD back.

Now I am starting to install and what do I find? My F*CKING backup is corrupt. Need to download most things again (unless I can find them on other disks.

BASTARD!

 

[Summo]

Godammit! Do none of you read what I post?

Originally posted by stu
Format and Reinstall

Originally posted by Summo
No need! Booting from Win2000 CD will let you do all that.

Originally posted by Dimebag
And you'd still have the option to boot on the boot menu except it would just error hideously and do nothing.

Originally posted by Summo
You can then manually remove the option to boot into WinME by editing the boot.ini file on the root of C: and simply deleting the line that refers to 'Microsoft Windows'

Once again I will also advocate the format/install method.

BOOT FROM THE WINDOWS 2000 CD! No need for startup floppies!

 

[Wilier]

Originally posted by Summo
Godammit! Do none of you read what I post?





Once again I will also advocate the format/install method.

BOOT FROM THE WINDOWS 2000 CD! No need for startup floppies!

Shaddapp!!!

 

[~Lazarus~]

Originally posted by Summo
Godammit! Do none of you read what I post?

No. Should we?

Honestly - I tried to boot from CD - wouldnt let me - even selecting F9 during bootup - didnt work.

Might be I have a *cough* dodgy win2k disk :/

 

[xane]

To boot from the CD you normally have to do some trickery with the BIOS settings, if your mobo allows it.

 

[Mellow-]

It's not really trickery as such. Just press the relevant key during startup to get to your BIOS settings, head for the boot sequence menu (or something similar) and shuffle the CD drive to the top of the list. Insert the CD and restart the machine and voila, the setup process is on the screen.

Such is the joy of Win2k.

 

[stu]

Originally posted by Summo
Godammit! Do none of you read what I post?

No.

That's confused you hasn't it.

 

[caLLous]

Originally posted by xane
To boot from the CD you normally have to do some trickery with the BIOS settings, if your mobo allows it.

Trickery my arse. The default boot order (by default I mean on all of the BIOS setups I've seen) is floppy, CD-ROM, HDD01. Therefore, if there's nothing in the floppy drive, it will go straight into the CD boot process.

Originally posted by Mellow
Insert the CD and restart the machine and voila, the setup process is on the screen.

Such is the joy of Win2k.

...and also every other bootable CD on the planet...

 

[Mellow-]

You are mean.