Need advice on reformatting

[Gordon Nelson]

I have WinXP installed on an old laptop. I wish to scrub the hard disk clean
and install Win98SE. Can anyone point me to a freeware or shareware disk
utility that will do that? I have tried Fdisk that is included on a Win98
startup disk, but when it sees the drive is now completely allocated to
NTFS, I can't get it to do anything--can't delete the partition or anything.
Just cycles through an endless loop. I have a nifty Western Digital CD with
good utilities on it, but the hard drive on the laptop is an IBM drive and I
can't find anything useful on the IBM website. The WD disk is only for WD
products. Purchasing Partition Magic is a solution, I suppose, but I'm
trying to conserve my resources.

 

[Nepatsfan]

Download delpart.exe from this location:

http://www.russelltexas.com/delpart.htm

Put it on your Win98 startup disk, boot from the floppy and run
delpart.exe from the prompt. You should be able to delete the
partition. You can then use fdisk to create a new partition.

 

[Alex]

http://www.hitachigst.com/portal/site/en/menuitem.368c8bfe833dee8056fb11f0aa
c4f0a0/

IBM hardrives are now under Hitachi goto above and download drive fitness
test and use erase feature,this will allow you to reformat to FAT

 

[Mike Hall \(MS-MVP\)]

Gordon

When using the FDISK function of a Win 98 boot diskette, you have to use the
option to delete a NON-DOS partition first..

 

[Michael Stevens]

In

I have WinXP installed on an old laptop. I wish to scrub the hard
disk clean and install Win98SE. Can anyone point me to a freeware or
shareware disk utility that will do that? I have tried Fdisk that is
included on a Win98 startup disk, but when it sees the drive is now
completely allocated to NTFS, I can't get it to do anything--can't
delete the partition or anything. Just cycles through an endless
loop. I have a nifty Western Digital CD with good utilities on it,
but the hard drive on the laptop is an IBM drive and I can't find
anything useful on the IBM website. The WD disk is only for WD
products. Purchasing Partition Magic is a solution, I suppose, but
I'm trying to conserve my resources.

Click on or copy and paste the link below into your web browser address box.
Remove XP and install 98/Me
#03 on the FAQ list.
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/xpfaq.html
--
Michael Stevens MS-MVP XP
(e-mail address removed)
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com
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