Wiping clean and starting over

[theletch1]

I have a friend in the area who has a 7 year old computer and can't afford a new one. She is experiencing problem after problem and has been told by tech support somewhere that the best solution is to wipe the hard drive and reload her operating system. As I am the closest thing to a computer guy that she has available she has asked me to do it.:shrug: My question is this.... how do I do it? She has a pentium 2 processor and windows 98. What software will I need on hand and what commands should I have written down before I begin this process? Any help on this would be very much appreciated as her tech support is at an outrageous cost.

 

[satans.barber]

You need to format the drive for her first. You can't do this from inside Windows obviously, so you have to do it from DOS.

You need to use the tool in Win98 that makes a boot disk, and as far as I remember, it puts format.com onto that disk, this is what you need. If it doesn't put it on there, then find it on-line and copy it to the disk (for some stupid reason, it's not on the win98 CD).

Then you need to boot the PC into DOS, so put your disk into the floppy drive and re-start the machine. If it boots into DOS OK (you'll see a black screen with c:\ and not a lot else) then you're in DOS, if it goes back into windows, you need to tell teh PC to actually boot off the floppy. To do this, when you first turn it on you have to get into the BIOS, ususally by pressing del, f1 or f2 (it will say somewhere on the screen). Once in there, you need to find the boot order options, and move the floppy drive above the hard drive, or make it the first boot device (the menues vary).

Once you've done that, re-boot again, and you should see the screen above.

type 'cd a:\' and press enter, that shoudl change you to the floppy drive. Then you need to type 'format c:'. A load of messages will come up saying things like GAAAAH, DO YOU REALLY WANT TO DO THIS? HMM? DO YOU REALLY? HMM? ALL YOUR DATA WILL DISSAPEAR YOU KNOW! ARE YOU SURE? etc., so press yes until it goes ahead and formats it.

That's it, the drive will be clear once it's done. Then you need to take out the floppy and pop in the Windows 98 CD, so you can re-install windows. Re-boot the machine, and if you get a menu that says start windows install/boot with cd support/boot with no cd support, you can choose the first option and go ahead installing windows again. If not much happens, go into the BIOS as outlined above, and change teh boot order so that the CD drive is at the top, rather than the floppy, then re-boot again.

I assume once windows begins to start re-installing, and everything is menu and graphics driven, you can probably manage from there. Remember to unplug any USB devices before you start the win98 install.

Once the basic installation is done, you'll need to re-install all her drivers for her sound card/video card etc. from the CDs that came with them, if they're not installed automagically. If you have no CDs, you're gonna have to get drivers on-line from somewhere like driverguide.com or windrivers.com.

As you can see, this is fairly complicated, so if you can't manage it she'll have to get it done at a puter shop. BE WARNED: puter shops charge stupid prices for doing this (actually pretty simple) job, as they know you usually have no other choice.

HTH, ask any questions you may have,

Ian.

 

[theletch1]

Ian,
Thanks for the help. I'm supposed to go over this weekend and do this. As luck would have it I tend to have a good deal of patience when dealing with these things (especially if it's someone elses machine) I'll print a copy of your post to take with me.

 

[Rich Parsons]

before you wipe clean the drive, if the computer is online, find out what type of video and sound cards and hard drive are in the computer. You can download the new and o latest drives' from the internet form sites of the company.

Also, you can ask if she has just reinstalled Windows.

This the first step I would take, given that I had a computer down for a few days until I could get teh right driver to make it work.


Just my thoughts and suggestions

 

[michaeledward]

You will also need the Windows License number. When you being the installation of WIN98, the Operating System will begin the process of recognizing the basic hardware components (keyboard, mouse port, monitor, etc) ... at some point in the installation it will ask you for the License Number.

If you ain't got it ... you ain't goin' anywhere. You can't just guess.

Now, maybe, if your friend is very organized, she will have the little card with the license on it .. but probably not.

Look for it in the System Properties (right click 'My Computer' and select Properties BEFORE you format the C-Drive. The license ID will be in the 'Registered To: area of the 'General Tab' on the System Properties.

Good Luck.

If you have never done this .... you will learn alot.

Mike


PS .... Oh, and it will probably take more than a weekend. ;-)