Profiles & partitions questions

[Schnide]

Okay, here goes - I have a machine running Windows 2000 Pro upgraded from
Windows 98.

1) I'd like to have a clean install of Win2K but I only have one machine
available at present. Can I partition my HD, install Win2K on the new
partition, copy over my old files and then delete the old partition and
reunite the drive? Is it difficult if so?

2) I'm the only user on my machine and although I ocassionally need to
network with other computers in my house, I don't want to have separate IDs
on Win2K - I know I could only have one I use but I don't want them to exist
at all, neither Administrator or any other kind of levels of access. Can I
do this with Win2K or should I be looking at Windows XP Home for the future?

3) When I do install Win2K it always seems to give me errors when opening
files such as Word documents - it says something like "This file is already
is use by another user. Would you like to revert to the old file?" which I
presume is some kind of sharing error but I don't understand how on a sole
machine if it's the first time I've opened it. Any ideas?

Many, many thanks -

Schnide

 

[Eric Phillips]

Hi Schnide,

On your first point, you will not be able to split your current Windows 98
partition or rejoin them afterwards without third party software, such as
Partition Magic. I do not see a way to do a clean install of Win2k without
having a second hard drive, or some sort of backup (DVD burner for example)
available.

As for your second point, Windows 2000, and all versions of Windows XP have
user accounts, it is impossible to just not have a user account at all. It
is not a problem to make the existance of them transparent though.

You mentioned you had a second computer in the house, I would copy all your
files that you need to keep onto that second computer, load Windows 2000
from scratch, set some password you will remmember for Administrator, and at
the very end of the install it will ask if more then one person will use the
computer or, "Always assume this user is logging in:" and enter the
administrator username/password.

And lastly, I can not help much on the last issue, if you could give some
more information such as where the file is located (local or on your
networked PC). Does it happen after a fresh reboot, does it happen on all
files, and does it always happen?

Eric Phillips

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

1. There is no need to split your hard disk. Just re-install Win2000 and
select a different destination folder than the one you have at present.

2. You MUST have a logon account under Win2000 but you can set
things so that you never need to enter a password. As a word of
warning: don't fall into the trap of having just one single admin account.
Many people have lived to regret this one: What do you do when the
account goes bad for some reason? You'd be locked out!

3. These links show you how to fix this problem. It has nothing to
do with other users keeping files open.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;200915
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;296055
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;177248