clean install / formatting hard drive

[Craig Smith]

due to problems with viruses i need to do a clean install
of Windows 2000 SP4, i chose the option to do a clean
install when i inserted my win2k cd and the pc restarted
and when it rebooted i chose the option "Windows 2000
Professional Setup" and everything seemed to be going fine
until it said "Setup is now starting Windows 2000" (or
words to that effect) and then presented me with a
bluescreen with an error message
containing "INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_SECTOR", so i then tried
again booting from startup disks, but i got an error about
the setup not being able to find my hard disk (200gb IDE
non-RAID).
when that failed i tried to use the recovery console but
got the same INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_SECTOR error, so now when i
boot my pc i have a choice of 3 OS to boot into, Win2k
Pro, Win2k Pro Setup and Win2k Recovery Console, none of
which are any good to me, so i was wondering if there is
anyway of me booting my pc with some kind of command
prompt so that i can completely format my harddrive and
start from scratch again?
thanks in advance for any help,

-Craig

 

[Andy]

Win2K does not recognise HD greater than about 130G unless
it is sp2 or above.

You can use a win98 boot disk to delete and repartition
before the fresh install. If your HD needs special
controller, you will need to F6 early and insert the
driver floppy.

Hope this info is useful.

 

[Craig Smith]

by sp2 do you mean Service Pack 2? the windows 2000 cd i
have contains SP4 and there are no partitions on the hard
drive, as far as i know i don't need any special
controllers as i don't have a floppy disk to suggest
otherwise, just the installation cd for the motherboard.
i just checked and i do actually have a SCSI hard drive,
so now i'm at an even greater loss as what to do...

-----Original Message-----

Win2K does not recognise HD greater than about 130G unless
it is sp2 or above.

You can use a win98 boot disk to delete and repartition
before the fresh install. If your HD needs special
controller, you will need to F6 early and insert the
driver floppy.

Hope this info is useful.

 

[DL]

If you have 3 boot options it doesnt seem as though you have done a clean
(Format/install) rather installed a second copy.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;304868
Note items 4 / 5

 

[Guest]

i have 3 options because the clean install fails because
it doesn't detect my hard drive, and also because i
installed the recovery console which also didn't detect my
hard drive, so now i want totally format my hard drive but
can't because all i get when i boot up is those 3 options
and i can't very well start formatting my hard drive while
using windows now can i?

 

[DL]

You boot from the win cd, you may have to amend boot order in bios