Format a win 2k machine with lost password.

[Celtic Warrior]

I bought a PC from my employer and wish to blank the hard drive and do a
clean install to get rid of all the corporate network crap. The PC is a Win
2k Machine and the password is not known.

I have been trying to boot from a floppy so I can repartition and reformat
the drives. I can get an A prompt but then I can't see Drive C, D or E.

It has been a long time since the Dos Prompt. What am I missing?

 

[pen]

can fdisk find the drive? It's probably formatted NTFS.
Use fdisk to format it ortry this ntfs for win98;
http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/ntfswin98.shtml

 

[Guest]

It seems that the hard drives are formated as NTFS ( We cannot see NTFS partition in DOS mode). I suggest you use Fdisk command to delete all non dos partition and then repartition the hard disk and reformat it.

 

[Rick]

I bought a PC from my employer and wish to blank the hard drive and do a
clean install to get rid of all the corporate network crap. The PC is a Win
2k Machine and the password is not known.

I have been trying to boot from a floppy so I can repartition and reformat
the drives. I can get an A prompt but then I can't see Drive C, D or E.

It has been a long time since the Dos Prompt. What am I missing?

Just boot off your Win2K CD and it will give you the chance
to remove/recreate your existing partitions. Depending on your
disk controller you may need to hit F6 at the start of installation
to install a custom driver from floppy.

Rick

 

[Bruce Chambers]

Greetings --

It sounds like you're using a DOS boot diskette. MS-DOS cannot
read Win2K's NTFS partitions.

Simply boot from the Win2K installation CD. You'll be offered the
opportunity to delete, create, and format partitions as part of the
installation process. (You may need to re-arrange the order of boot
devices in the PC's BIOS to boot from the CD.)


Bruce Chambers
--
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[Celtic Warrior]

Thank you.

I got it to boot and partition off of the XP CD I purchased for the machine.
XP Home is installed now. The Second hard drive is MIA. Any thoughts?