Windows 2000 help

I want to install windows xp on my laptop. I have window 2000 on it now. I try to install xp and it tells me not to install two operating systems on the same partition. It wont let me delete the partition for some reason. I guess I need to uninstall win 2000 first. I cant figure out how. I know in Win ME and 98 U can fdisk. Is there a feature in win 2000 like this? Or how do I get to the dos prompt to format c drive. please help......

Just boot from the WinXP cd. If the disk is in the drive when you boot up, then it should say something like "Press any key to boot from the CD..." Press a key, then the windows install will start. When you pick what drive to install to, it will show you all of the partitions and hdd's you have. You can choose to delete the existing parition, and recreate a new one. After that, it will ask you if you want to format the new partition with fat32 or ntfs. I strongly recommend choosing NTFS. It will also ask if you want to do a format or a quick format. Again, I recommend doing the full format, just to make sure you delete everything that was there before. After that, your in business. Hope that helps.

About the post above, I would disagree on one thing. It's quite pointless to do a full format, unless you got plenty of time to waste. By the time you ever gave away your PC(if you ever do), most likely you would have written over those files anyways. Second, most people aren't going to use programs to try to "recover" those files, considering you didn't overwrite them.

Finally, even a full format is completely useless in preventing the recover of files. The only safe way is to use DOD(Department of Defense) quality file shredders. But those require countless days to fully shred a HD to make it unreadable. Even then, there are still high quality machines that can still recover some things.

So basically...just do a quick format. It takes seconds, and saves you time. Every time you save a file or change its location, you overwrite any existing file, just as a full format would do.

My reasoning for doing the full format is not just for security. I also use it as a way to check the integrity of the drive. I had a RAID 0 array on my system for a while, so I would always do the full format as a check for the integrity of the array. If it can sustain a high load operation such as formatting, then it is probably relatively stable. Also, if you have any bad sectors or something the drive, they will be dealt with accordingly in the begining, before you install windows. But that's just me.

Hmm...forgot about that aspect. Although, now I'm worried Whenever I go to install XP(using a backup burned disk), I can never seem to do a full format. It'll go through the entire process, just to say it's failed at the end. But...I'm thinking that has more to do with a bad disk, right? It also won't install a few files during installation(1-3). Of course, I"m still using the OS so apparently those files weren't too important, I just skipped them.

That's probably just the disk you are using to install. But I'd run scan disk or some other disk utility just to be sure. You might have some bad sectors or something, and not even know it.

Hmm...like right clicking "MY Computer" and scanning it that way? Or use a program like Norton Disk Doctor? That's all that's available.

I still think it's the disk though. But, unfortunately I have done countless(!) formats of my HD, and I'm afraid that's hurt my HD. Would that cause a HD to go bad or loose speed? I really formatted it alot...and even used file shredding programs a few days worth.

Hmm...forgot about that aspect. Although, now I'm worried Whenever I go to install XP(using a backup burned disk), I can never seem to do a full format. It'll go through the entire process, just to say it's failed at the end. But...I'm thinking that has more to do with a bad disk, right? It also won't install a few files during installation(1-3). Of course, I"m still using the OS so apparently those files weren't too important, I just skipped them.

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Check your HDD access modes in the BIOS. If you screwed up, sometimes whatever's reading the disk won't be able to read the very last byte. 98SE setup used to ***** at me all the time about it.

I still think it's the disk though. But, unfortunately I have done countless(!) formats of my HD, and I'm afraid that's hurt my HD. Would that cause a HD to go bad or loose speed? I really formatted it alot...and even used file shredding programs a few days worth.

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No.

It really doesn't hurt it...even tons of formats? I just feel like it's slower...even if I do a fresh install. Maybe it's just my imagination..hard to tell. I'm on the PC's at school, which are amazing. They're 2Ghz P4's, probably SATA, DDR memory, etc. My PC is a crap celeron, 5400RPM, SDRAM...and onboard graphics.

What do you mean by checking my HDD access modes?

What do you mean by checking my HDD access modes?

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Get into your BIOS and check them out. Examples would be CHS, LBA, and Large. Should be set to "Auto", but even that can screw up. And see that XP is running your hard disk controllers in UDMA.

Well, I'm pretty sure everything is normal. It used to work fine, but now it doesn't work. Probably just some corrupt files or something that is causing it. Oh well...