Reformatting a hard drive with Windows 2000 Installed

[Robin]

How do I do that? - No directives have been found
anywhere. Yahoo nor Google! Someone please help me!

 

[Dan Seur]

You can format all but your system drive from within Disk Manager.

Under no circumstances will a running W2k allow you to format the
partition containing itself. You must do this from some other booted
system on the machine, typically a DOS-based boot from a diskette or a
bootable OS install CD. (You can use the W2k CD for this; after the W2k
install process begins, it offers you the opportunity to format any
partition, as a prelude to installing to that partition.)

 

[Mike Levy]

Trying to format the drive 2000 is on? No can do. You need to boot
off the install CD and wipe it from there.

Now, if this is a DIFFERENT partition, go into Computer Management
(Right-click My Computer and select Manage) and then navigate to Disk
Management...

 

[Lal]

I have the same problem..ie Want to reformat my hard
disk, on which w2k is installed. When I try booting using
w2k cd, it does nto give me the option that you referred
ie asking me to format any partition etc).

The other alternative of Dos based boot...can you tell me
how do I go about doing that ?

 

[ferg]

get a copy of Partition Magic and get someone to show you
how to use it. That will solve your problem. Good luck

 

[Dan Seur]

Lal -
It is very strange that the W2k install process doesn't give you the
option. I suspect either you're stopping it too soon (the option is not
the first thing presented, if I recall correctly) or you're not
recognizing it when it appears.

To boot into DOS you can either download a bootable diskette image from
www.bootdisk.com or (I think) simply boot a W95-98 CD if you have one.
The actual DOS program you'd use is named "fdisk.exe". Make sure it's
included on the diskette. (If it's not, you can find downloadable copies
of it on the web.) Be careful with it. It's powerful.