You are going to need to reinstall, but you do not have to reformat
the computer. Set your computer to boot from cd drive. You can then boot
from W2K install disk. Follow instructions. It will detect an existing
installation and ask you if you want to install in the same folder. Select
yes and it will warn you that old installation will be deleted, which is
what you want and then proceed. It will ask if you want to use existing file
system. Select yes, but no to format. This way you will reinstall, but most
of your data will be intact. Tcp/ip will need to be reconfigured, so plan on
that, but if you are a dhcp client it should not be a big deal - choose
typical when it asks. You will have to reinstall your applications on top of
themselves and any drivers for devices that were not installed during plug
and pray, because the new install will not have any reference to them in the
registry or the needed files in the \winnt folder. After you reinstall go to
Windows Update to install all critical updates. Your data files will also be
accessable if the hard drive is installed in another W2K/XP computer as a
secondary drive or through a parallel install of the operating system. --
Steve
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=304868