Can I format Win 2000 Professional?

Question

I have a Dell Optiplex gx 150 with win 2000 pro on it which is my son's.He had a blue screen and gave it to me to fix(tks).
I have no win 2000 pro cd or disk.The furthest I got was to a command prompt and it said operating system missing.
I can get to the command prompt so I thought I would try to install win 98 se from the cd I have.
Started off fine and then when I got to the install icon it said that I didn't have enough memory to install it.
Is there some way for me to format this pc which originally had win 2000 pro on it?
I have obviously lost win 2000 on this pc but i do have it on another and xp home on another.
I was hoping to get at least win 98 se on it.
Thanks if you can help.

Answer 1

Hi there,

Yes you can format the hard drive that contains windows 2000 on it,you will have to reformat in order to get windows 98 SE onto it and without getting the out of memory error but why go backwards? you did state that you have windows XP Home edition? I would be more inclined to install XP over 98SE this way you at the very least can do the upgrade option and install successfully without loosing any of your previous data and without having to reformat....let me know how you get on.

Cheers,

Colin

Answer 2

One possible solution to your problem would be to take out the harddrive and install it as a slave drive in your working computer. Then, use the command prompt command "format (volume name)" to format it. Otherwise, I believe (but am not sure) that the install disk should give you the option to format. It has been a while since I've done anything with 98. I would suggest trying the first solution, and seeing if that works.

Answer 3

You cannot format Win2K installed Harddisk using Win98 CD. Win2K HDD is formated as NTFS, and Win98 only support FAT32 format, which just can't touch or see any NTFS HDD. Get an Win2K CD or WinXP CD to unformat the HDD, then install Win98.

Answer 4

in my opinion, i does not set up XP over 2000 till you've a particular desire for XP and 2000 merely received't shrink it. XP is a lot extra of a source hog than 2000, and also you extremely do not benefit all that a lot from the change. As they say, if it ain't broke, do not restore it. besides, merely boot the computing gadget with the XP CD; formatting the troublesome disk is area of the setup. you may want to favor to poke round your BIOS settings and set your CD-ROM force because the first boot gadget to be able besides from CD. merely press inspite of key the computing gadget tells you to press to enter setup for the period of device boot. (Its frequently something like delete)