Reformatting hard drives

Factual Questions
1

Sorry if this sounds stupid, but I’m scared and need someone to hold my hand (metaphorically speaking; what I actually need is another body part held, but I may have to do that myself! )

My computer is way screwed up, and I’ve concluded that it is time to reformat the hard drives, re-install win98 (cursed be it’s name!,and start from scratch…

I’ve never done this before; and although I am not a complete newbie, I have a few questions before I mess my computer up even worse than it is now:

Background info first… I have 3 drives (C,and D/E). C is 13 gigs, D/E is a 3.2 gig drive partitioned into 2 drives. I’m running win98 SE (again, cursed be it’s name) on a Pentium II, 400 Mhz system.

OK, now questions:

  1. How should I reformat… IE: steps I should take? (I’m pretty sure I know, but want to make sure I’m not missing something, so assume I’m a moron…)

  2. is it possible to reformat 1/2 of a partitioned drive without reformatting the other half?

  3. What is the advantage of partitioning a drive? And should I partition a 13 Gig drive? Why/why not?

4)If I should partition the 13 gig drive, HOW? (this I do not know… and am afraid to mess with it!)
That’s it, I think…
Thanks to all who reply and help me out!!

2

First of all, you do not need to format your secondary drive at all. The system is not located there, just files. First of all, back up any personal files you want from your C drive to either D or E. There’s really no advanatage to partitioning unless you want them for organizational reasons. Anyway, copy all those files you want to D or E, then format C only. Put in a boot disk, reinstall Windows, and then install any programs you have again. (you’ll need to reinstall most, even though you may have files on D or E. But, there really is no reason to format that secondary drive. If you wanted to, you could only format D or E without doing the other.

If you need instructions on how to do the format: Make a boot disk, and make sure the format.com file is on the disk. Boot with that floppy, and then type: “format c: /s”. The /s copies system files to C. This way, you can take out the boot floppy and boot to C without a floppy later if you want to. Insert the Windows CD and begin the install.

Jman

3

Thanks, Jman!

But… it’s a long story that I don’t wanna get into right now… D/E used to be C/D; then I had a comp store put in the 13 gig drive (which is now C) and never reformatted D/E when that happened (also upgraded [???] from win95 to win98SE [cursed be its name!])… consequently, I carried over some problems from the old HD onto the new HD… I want to reformat all of them, and start over!

My plan is to reformat E, save everything I want onto it, then reformat D and C and re-install win98 SE (cursed be its name!). Is this possible, or not?

4

Before you format first make a written note of what programs you have and where you got can get them back from note down which versions you have.

Then make a note of any drivers you have and where you can reload them from ,note down which versions you have.

If you have icq then make a note of all the icq numbers in your contact list.

Write down the passwords and user names for any sites you have registered to use, like SDMB for example.

If you have any games then it is a good idea to note down the settings you have.Some games like Half-Life have a folder for maps and one for player skins - make copies of these on the partition of your hard drive - the part you are not going to format.You can then copy them back when you re-install and you will not lose any of the downloaded material.

If there are any registration codes required for programs that you run then go to “Help” and “about this program” and not down the number contained therein.

Go to your system settings in control panel and click on networks - make a note of what you have in the way of protocols, clients etc.

Check your modem properties and note the settings down.

Go to internet short cut and look at your ISP’s. Check the settings of each one and note the passwords, log-on names dial up numbers etc.

If you use outlook express or any other mail client then make a note of your POP3 servers.

Make a copy of your favourites folder , the one in windows with the blue star on it, on your partition - and you can copy it back without losing them.

You should be able to find the folders which you keep your correspondance in, again copy them to your partition.

You need to be organised about this and it will take a while to gather up all this information but if you don’t you risk losing something you want to keep or having hours of frustration trying to recover various account.

Ideally you should have all this to hand anyway as I’m sure you, like most people, have kept everything well documented.
If only people really did do all that!!

If any of you can add to this list of housekeeping then feel free to do so.

5

Thanks Casdave! I thought of all of this except the ICQ numbers! I spaced on those…

6

Its better to just get something like System Suite 2000, which is a program that can clean your system very well, restore registry links, check & clean files, etc.
Norton System Works might do a similar thing.

First time I used it there were about 500 registry entries that needed to be cleaned.

7

Cleaning out registry entries caused me mucho grief.
I used Nortons Cleensweep to do the deed and it came up with a list of entries with green checkboxes, meaning that they were safe to remove.
Didn’t work out like that.

8

Jman’s instructions are good, but left out one step- make sure you can still access your CDROM drive AFTER you’ve booted from the floopy boot-disk! You will probably need to copy the CDROM drivers onto the floppy. After you make your boot disk, boot off it and see if you can access the CDROM. If you can’t don’t format anything until you can!

If you have a Windows installation floppy boot-disk, that may have CDROM drivers on it, though, so you wouldn’t need to copy them onto your boot disk. Another trick is to copy the entire windows CDROM onto your other hard drive, so you can install from that hard drive instead of worrying about your CDROM at all.

Anyway, the bottom line is be careful that you don’t end up in a state where you can’t re-install windows because you can’t access the CDROM.

Arjuna34

9

“I used Nortons Cleensweep to do the deed and it came up with a list of entries with green
checkboxes”
It has an UNDO feature. But I don’t use Cleansweep anymore. SystemSuite is much better & has an undo.

10

After copying critical file info per previous post recommendations here are some generic re-format and windows install suggestions.

Make a boot disk with your CD drivers on it and also have these programs below on it. You can find most of them in your c:\windows\command or c:\windows\system or c:\windows directories. The teac_cdi.sys driver is my CD driver but it is so generic I have yet to find any IDE based CD it will not work with. Substitute your CD driver as required.
FORMAT COM 49,575 05-11-98 8:01p FORMAT.COM
CONFIG SYS 114 01-02-99 7:45p CONFIG.SYs
EDIT COM 69,902 05-11-98 8:01p EDIT.COM
EMM386 EXE 125,495 05-11-98 8:01p EMM386.EXE
FDISK EXE 63,900 05-11-98 8:01p FDISK.EXE
AUTOEXEC BAT 79 01-02-99 7:44p AUTOEXEC.bat
HIMEM SYS 33,191 05-11-98 8:01p HIMEM.SYS
MSCDEX EXE 25,473 08-24-96 11:11a MSCDEX.EXE
SYS COM 18,967 05-11-98 8:01p SYS.COM
TEAC_CDI SYS 11,344 06-07-96 1:25a TEAC_CDI.SYS
XCOPY EXE 3,878 05-11-98 8:01p XCOPY.EXE

autoexec.bat file is setup as follows

a:\MSCDEX.EXE /D:TEAC-CDI /M:15 /L:e

config.sys file is setup as follows

Device=a:\Himem.Sys
Device=a:\EMM386.Exe
DEVICE=a:\TEAC_CDI.SYS /D:TEAC-CDI
rem DOS=SINGLE
rem DOS=HIGH,UMB

Once re-partitioned and re-formatted to your spec reboot and go to your CD drive and type in setup.exe. You may need a win95 CD if your Win 98 CD was a 98 upgrade disk and not an original install 98 CD. It wants to check the WIN 95 disk to verify that you in fact own an MS Win OS that the upgrade applies to. After you put in the ser ID # and it checks the 95 disk it proceeeds on it’s merry way.