If, for whatever reason, you've decided that you want
to wipe your whole hard disk and install Windows 2000 from scratch,
here's how to do it.
Please note that these instructions assume that your
hard disk is not separated into different partitions (different drive
letters for different parts of the hard disk). It also assumes that
you only have one hard disk. It assumes that you understand that
wiping your whole hard disk means that you will lose ALL
data on the hard disk!
DJNafey
-------------------------
Did you get a recovery CD with the laptop or PC? If
so, you ought to be able to put the CD in, then boot up with that
in order to run the recovery process or format the hard disk and
get Windows 2000 installed.
Failing that, get a Windows 2000 boot disk set (typically
4 floppy disks) from BootDisk.com - http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm
- or use the Windows 2000 boot disks that came with your laptop or
PC.
When the laptop or PC successfully boots off of the
first floppy disk in the set, it will start the initial loading sequence.
After a couple of minutes, it will ask you for Disk 2. Take out the
first disk and put in the second disk and continue the process. When
appropriate, it will ask for the third and fourth disks.
Once the initial boot sequence has completed, you will
be prompted to insert your Windows 2000 installation CDROM. You will
be prompted to agree to the licencing agreement to proceed with the
Windows 2000 Setup process.
After a couple of minutes, you will be prompted to
repair an existing installation or to perform a clean installation.
Choose the option to put on a new installation of Windows 2000.
Whe you are prompted to specify the partition that
you wish to install Windows 2000 onto, select the C:\ drive. There
will be a key to press to delete the existing C:\ drive parition.
You will then be asked to confirm this again with another key.
Once the
C:\ drive is deleted, the same Windows 2000 Setup screen will display
all of the space on your hard disk as "free
space". Select the "free space" entry in the list
and press Enter in order to install Windows 2000 in the free space.
You will be asked to create a partition (i.e. a C:\
drive) and to specify the size of the C:\ drive. By default, this
will show the maximum available space on the hard disk. Press Enter
to accept this, i.e. to use as much empty space on your hard disk
as possible to create a C:\ drive. You should only not do this if
you are confident that you wish to create two partitions and that
you know the size of each partition that you want to specify.
Once you've specified the size, it will ask you whether
you want to format the partition as FAT32 or NTFS or to 'leave the
current file system intact'. FAT32 should be used if this PC/laptop
will be networked with (or otherwise accessed by) other PCs that
are not running Windows NT/2000/XP. Otherwise, choose NTFS as this
is more secure. Note that choosing an NTFS format will actually mean
that the C:\ drive will be formatted as FAT32 initially and it will
then be automatically converted to NTFS the next time that you reboot
or after the setup process is completed.
Once this
is all dealt with, continue through the setup process and Windows
2000 will be installed onto your "clean" formatted
hard disk. Follow the instructions on the screen.
Let us know if that helps or if there were any steps
that were different on your system - thanks