You need some knowledge of DOS. Are you comfortable with it?
Is your hard drive formated in NTFS or FAT32?
If it's FAT32 then the FDISK tool on the Win98 startup disk can format it. If it's in NTFS, then FDISK can't format it or even delete the NTFS partitions.
Displaying the drive partitions' properties from within the Windows 2000 Explorer should tell you if it's NTFS or FAT32.
If your drive is FAT32, then you should be able to access it from DOS when you boot with the Win98 startup disk (typing "dir c:" displays the directory content of your main Win2k partition; check for the presence of a Winnt folder to verify). To reformat your drive (assuming you only have 1 partition) you boot in DOS with your Win98 startup disk, verify that you can access your Win98 CD-ROM from DOS (if you have only 1 partition it should be on E:, or on another letter if you have more than 1 partition).
When you're sure you can access your Win98 CD from DOS ("dir e:") you type
format c:/s
to format your drive. Then you start the Win98 installation:
cd E:
install
(replace E: with the letter for your CD drive)
If your drive is NTFS, then you're going to have a lot of fun.
Read this article:
Q250456 - How to Manually Remove Windows 2000 and Restore Windows 95/98The Windows 2000 Pro CD is bootable. You need to change your BIOS settings though so that the PC is booted on the CD drive first.
I removed Win2k from my system 2 days ago. I tried the procedure above to remove my NTFS partitions, i.e. boot on the CD and go in the recovery console. It didn't work because I had forgot my administrator password (could swear I had put none), and besides since it's a French version it reverted to the French AZERTY keyboard in the recovery console while we use good old QWERTY (though a bit modified) around here. There was no chance I could correctly type any password.
What I finally did was to boot my PC on the Win2k CD and proceed as if I was going through the installation of Win2k, because one of the first steps allows you to create and delete existing partitions. I deleted my NTFS partitions then aborted the installation and booted on my Win98 startup disk (had to change the BIOS settings back to normal, i.e. boot sequence A/C/SCSI instead of CDROM/C/A).
Then I used the FDISK tool on the Win98 startup disk to create FAT32 partitions, activated the C partition for booting, exited, rebooted the PC on the Win98 startup disk and executed the FORMAT command above then proceeded to install Win98SE.
Oh man, I sure hope your drive is FAT32.
Just a note: if you want a dual boot system, check this knowledge base article:
Q217210 - Multi-Booting Windows 2000, Windows NT, Windows 95/98, and MS-DOSBasically:
you need to install Win98 FIRST.
Personally, I got tired of a dual boot system. Win2k requires more maintenance and the OS alone takes up at least 60MB memory (I think twice as much as Win98SE). And there's a lack of drivers for peripherals meant for the home users.
I tried WinME 2 days ago but AH didn't work so I had to reformat everything and install Win98SE back last night.
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DrSoya
308 (Polish) Squadron "City of Cracow" RAF
Part of the
Northolt Wing (First Polish Fighter Wing)[This message has been edited by DrSoya (edited 10-12-2000).]
