Downgrade me to 98 (I think)

[matttibb]

Right my brother just bought some heap of shit from a mate but he only needs it for surfing the web and word processing etc so it's ok I guess. He wants to have windows 98 instead of windows me so how would I go about doing this? ( I really am a total noob...)

 

[Waffle]

I think (AT will have a fit if I'm wrong), you'll need a boot disk with FDISK on it.

Then you boot up with the floppy in the drive, and run FDISK, formatting the disk and creating a new DOS Partition.

Reboot with the 98 CD and it will go through the installation.

 

[ThePenguinCometh]

Simple. Assunming you don't have anything on the hard-drive you need to save then you just need to re-format the hard-drive. To do that boot the computer from the Win98 CD and choose "Boot from CD ROM" then "Start Computer with CD-ROM support". That should take you into DOS and from there you can run the format. The program you want is called format.com and if I remember correctly is in the Win98 directory. So assuming you have only one partition and if you really are a total noob here are the commands you need:

d:
cd \win98
format c:

Of course DO NOT DO THIS IS THERE IS ANYTHING ON THE DISK YOU NEED!!!, clear enough? The program will remind you of this itself and ask you to confirm that you want to nuke the hard-drive. If you choose yes and it all goes well then you should have a nice, clean, empty hard-drive to play with. Now type "setup" or simpy reboot and you will be in the installer for Win98 and it won't complain about there being a version of Windows already installed.

Hope this helps.

 

[ThePenguinCometh]

I think (AT will have a fit if I'm wrong), you'll need a boot disk with FDISK on it.

I don't think FDISK is needed, unless ME uses a different filesystem that 98 doesn't recognise. By the way you will find FDISK on the Win98 CD under, I think, \TOOLS\OLDMSDOS\.

Then you boot up with the floppy in the drive, and run FDISK, formatting the disk and creating a new DOS Partition.

Slightly incorrect, FDISK alters the partition tables but does not format them. You will still need to run format.com but the installer will probably do that for you.

 

[Anti-Trend]

d:
cd \win98
format c:

Do'h! Well Waffle, at at least it wasn't you that got it wrong. :P It's actually:

format c: /s

...unless the HDD has a lot of bad sectors. In that case, you'd use:

format c: /s /u

-AT

 

[ThePenguinCometh]

Do'h! Well Waffle, at at least it wasn't you that got it wrong. :P It's actually:

format c: /s

...unless the HDD has a lot of bad sectors. In that case, you'd use:

format c: /s /u

-AT

I object. :smash:

Yes, if you wanted to make the hard-drive bootable then the /s is needed, but when you're booting and installing from the CD it will do this automatically, therefore my original post still stands, your Honour!

 

[Anti-Trend]

Yes, if you wanted to make the hard-drive bootable then the /s is needed, but when you're booting and installing from the CD it will do this automatically, therefore my original post still stands, your Honour!

I don't think 98 will do this automatically, although I'm positive 98SE and ME will. In any case, the /s flag adds system files to the HDD making it a bootable device. It certainly wouldn't hurt.

 

[ninja fetus]

I think formatting the hard drive under a working system would be a ton easier for him. Also he can save any useful data on the spot before the formattings

 

[Crusha19]

make sure you have a boot diskjust in case.
get on from bootdisk.com