Formatting a win 2000 laptop and reinstalling Win 98se

I'm hoping that someone has had some experience of this process and can
offer advice, as I've been told that this can be a tricky process.

A colleague has a very flaky ThinkPad running Win2K and, in order to run
some specific software (multi-lingual and extremely complicated compound
fonts), needs to go back to 98se. Can anyone advise if they've done it
before and whether there's a step-by-step guide knocking around?

Many and grovelling thanks as always.

 

Trent C said:

As long as the disc is FAT32 and not NTFS, you shouldn't have any problems.
2000 isn't a pain in the backside like XP.

 

I'm hoping that someone has had some experience of this process and can

Hi Brian,

Thanks for the extremely quick and helpful response. If it's a FAT32 HDD I
assume I just format and reinstall, in which case it's relatively
trouble-free. But let's assume the worst for a minute and that it is indeed
NTFS - what are my options?

TIA

 

Trent C said:

If it is NTFS, just use the convert command at a command prompt.
should be:-
convert /fs:fat32
check the system help files by searching for convert.

 

Brian H¹© said:

Actually, right clicking the HDD and choosing format should give you the choice
of formatting NTFS or FAT32 also.

 

You are joking, aren't you?

 

Harrison said:

Why would I be joking, there is also a function in Administrative Tools for
formatting drives.

 

I'm hoping that someone has had some experience of this process and
can

I wouldn't want to challenge you, Brian - your knowledge is clearly greater
than mine. That said, I have in the past been led to believe that the
journey from FAT32 to NTFS is one-way. I've nothing to base this on other
than hearsay, mind you.

 

Trent C said:

I experimented wth converting to NTFS back to FAT32 and back to NTFS to see if
there was any loss of files on my system some time ago.
The only thing I will *never* do again is to compress the drive. A day to
compress it, find there was no noticeable difference, so followed by a day
uncompressing, resulting in a total mess of the file system and the files on the
drive, causing defrag to run for 15 hours instead of 5 to 10 minutes.
In the end, I removed all the files, formatted and put the files back on the
drive.

 

I'm hoping that someone has had some experience of this process
and can

Thanks for the reassurance. I wonder what my friend meant when he said it
was a tricky process?

 

Trent C said:

He must be mistaking the problems for those of an XP system.

 

Many Thinkpads have a recovery partition. Do you see the option at bootup?
You're saying he needs to "go back" to 98SE, which makes me think that's
what came preloaded on his machine. If so, it's a breeze.

 

I'm hoping that someone has had some experience of this process and can

A useful suggestion, but I said "go back" because 98 is an earlier OS than
2000. I'll look for the recovery partition, though.

 

When you look for it, make sure you use a program that can see hidden
partitions. My vote wud be for Partition Magic.

Before you do that...try Brian's command advice.



Wishing you and yours a happy holiday season...

Trent

Proud member of the Roy Rogers fan club!

 

Taking a moment's reflection, Trent C mused:
|
| Thanks for the reassurance. I wonder what my friend meant when he said it
| was a tricky process?

The only thing I can think that would be tricky is Windows 98 *not*
having the necessary device drivers for the laptop ...

 

Ahh Brian did you get any fat buds for an early xmas present?
You may have used a third party program to convert to Fat32, but the
convert command will not work to change back from a native environment.