L
Lyle Strauss
Hello,
Any help would be appreciated. I am fairly computer-savy
but this one has me stumped. A few months ago I upgraded
from ME to XP using an XP upgrade CD. For various reasons
I want to uninstall XP and go back to ME, however my PC
does not like this idea. When I tried this, I got an
error message saying files were missing or corrupted (to
paraphrase) and ME was unrecoverable. So I tried plan B.
I have 2 hard drives and transfered all my important
files to the D drive. My intent was to reformat the C
drive and reinstall ME, starting from scratch. Since my
disk is fomated with NTFS, I am under the impression I
must reformat to FAT32 prior to installing ME. So I did
some reading and found that I must do this using
the "Recovery Console" on the XP CD. I installed it and
attempted to reformat. I used the following command:
FORMAT C: /FS:FAT32. When I pressed enter I got the
standard warning that all data would be destoyed and I
pressed Y to continue. I did not see any sign of activity
after that, not even the usual % complete of the
formating operation. After about 10 seconds, my prompt
reappeared. It seemed too fast to me and not right. I
then used the MAP command, which showed that the drive
was in fact FAT32. Then I used the DIR command which
indicated all my files were still present in the C drive.
I asked myself how this could be and thought, ok perhaps
it converted the disk to FAT32 without reformatting, but
I was skeptical. I then rebooted into XP and checked the
drive. XP said it was still NTFS. Strange! I also tried
booting the system using MS DOS 6.22 I t would not allow
me to reformat- I surmise this is because it is not
compatable with NTFS. It did not even recognize the hard
drive. So my question is this: How do I get rid of NTFS
and reformat my hard drive??
Thanks,
Lyle Strauss
Any help would be appreciated. I am fairly computer-savy
but this one has me stumped. A few months ago I upgraded
from ME to XP using an XP upgrade CD. For various reasons
I want to uninstall XP and go back to ME, however my PC
does not like this idea. When I tried this, I got an
error message saying files were missing or corrupted (to
paraphrase) and ME was unrecoverable. So I tried plan B.
I have 2 hard drives and transfered all my important
files to the D drive. My intent was to reformat the C
drive and reinstall ME, starting from scratch. Since my
disk is fomated with NTFS, I am under the impression I
must reformat to FAT32 prior to installing ME. So I did
some reading and found that I must do this using
the "Recovery Console" on the XP CD. I installed it and
attempted to reformat. I used the following command:
FORMAT C: /FS:FAT32. When I pressed enter I got the
standard warning that all data would be destoyed and I
pressed Y to continue. I did not see any sign of activity
after that, not even the usual % complete of the
formating operation. After about 10 seconds, my prompt
reappeared. It seemed too fast to me and not right. I
then used the MAP command, which showed that the drive
was in fact FAT32. Then I used the DIR command which
indicated all my files were still present in the C drive.
I asked myself how this could be and thought, ok perhaps
it converted the disk to FAT32 without reformatting, but
I was skeptical. I then rebooted into XP and checked the
drive. XP said it was still NTFS. Strange! I also tried
booting the system using MS DOS 6.22 I t would not allow
me to reformat- I surmise this is because it is not
compatable with NTFS. It did not even recognize the hard
drive. So my question is this: How do I get rid of NTFS
and reformat my hard drive??
Thanks,
Lyle Strauss