Re: Format Hard Disk

See below.

<rn5a@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1166143501.283941.48830@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
As I said, these files are hidden. If they were not there then your
machine would not boot!

Pegasus, I know that without these files, the m/c won't boot only &
that they are system & hidden files. I did search the system & hidden
files but couldn't locate them. As you suggested, I opened Command
Prompt & at the D:\> prompt, I copied (from your post) & pasted the
following 2 commands (one by one)

attrib c:\nt*.* -s -h -r
attrib c:\*.ini -s -h -r

replacing 'c' with 'd' (without the quotes, of course) since WinXP is
installed in the D:\ drive. Maybe you won't believe me but on both the
occasions I was told

File not found - D:\nt*.*
File not found - D:\*.ini
respectively. Now how does my m/c boot then? I am really perplexed.


This is not surprising. Your boot partition is most likely drive C:,
hence that's where these files are located, regardless of where
Windows is installed.

Also at the D:\> prompt, when I changed the drive from 'd' to 'c' in
the 2 commands & executed them, nothing happened.

Yes, something did happen: You made the files visible!

If you are at the
D:\> prompt & without entering any command, you just press the 'Enter'
key from the keyboard, just about nothing happens & you find the next
line in the Command Prompt go back to the D:\>. The same thing happened
when I changed the drive name from 'd' to 'c' & executed the 2 commands
you had suggested.

However, there is a bigger issue here. You do not appear to
believe in backups. Sooner or later you will learn the lesson that
flying without backups is a very dangerous thing to do. The lesson
could be very, very painful.

Of course, I do believe in back-ups & have backed-up all my files in
CDs. I have experienced the pain of not backing-up once upon a time
(when I just started working with computers) & that pain was more than
enough for me to realize the importance of back-ups.

I must admit, Edwin does have a good sense of humor :-)

Pegasus (MVP) wrote:
<rn5a@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1166046770.430522.182090@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- If you remove the folder c:\Program Files then your existing
Win2000
programs will no longer exist.
- If you remove c:\documents and settings then your user profiles
cease to exist.

No problem....I don't intend to use the programs existing in Win2K. I
just want Win2K to be a stand-by OS so that if I encounter any
problems
in WinXP in the future, I can search the Net & hopefully get a
solution
to resolve that problem using Win2K.

- Before re-installing Win2000 on C:, save the hidden files
c:\ntldr,
c:\ntdetect.com and c:\boot.ini in a safe place. Put them back
again
when Win2000 is up and running.

I have come across many articles advising the same i.e. save NTLDR &
NTDETECT.COM in a safe place but strangely, I don't find either of the
2 files existing in the C;\ drive where Win2K is installed right now.
I
even searched the hidden & system folders & files but couldn't locate
the 2 anywhere. I couldn't find boot.ini also anywhere but Win2K has
always been working fine since last two years or so until about 3-4
days back.

As I said, these files are hidden. If they were not there then your
machine would not boot! You must instruct Explorer to show you
hidden and system files. If you do not know how then you should
click Start / Help / Search, type "hidden" and read what it says about
displaying hidden files. You can also do it like so:
- Click Start / Run / cmd {OK}
- Type these commands:
attrib c:\nt*.* -s -h -r
attrib c:\*.ini -s -h -r

So just tell me whether the procedure I have talked about in post #1
in
this thread to delete all the files & folders (including the system
files & folders) and not uninstall the apps in C:\ & then re-install
Win2K in C:\ - will it be a safe approach? I don't want to lose my
MP3s
existing in C:\ when I re-install Win2K in C:\ at any cost.

Yes, you can boot your machine into WinXP, then manually delete
c:\Program Files and c:\WinNT. You should then empty your Recycle
Bin. However, there is a bigger issue here. You do not appear to
believe in backups. Sooner or later you will learn the lesson that
flying without backups is a very dangerous thing to do. The lesson
could be very, very painful. We deal with this issue every week in
these newsgroups.

- Buy a 100 GByte disk and install it as a slave drive. Use it for
your
.MP3 files. Disk are cheap!

I don't know in which part of the world do you stay & where you find
100GB hard disk cheap but atleast in the place where I stay, I don't
find them cheap :-)

I live in Australia and I can get a new 3.5" 80 GByte hard disk for
less than A$60.00. A newspaper costs A$1.40, a return plane ticket
to Europe about A$2,400. Compare!


Thanks for your ideas....

Pegasus (MVP) wrote:
<rn5a@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1165987092.682781.52340@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I have Win2K Pro installed in the C:\ drive & WinXP Pro installed
in
the D:\ drive of my m/c. Due to some reasons, Win2K just refuses
to
start though while booting it shows the 'Windows is starting
up...'
screen along with the Win2K logo after which Win2K restarts
itself.
The
C:\ & D:\ drives are partitioned with each having hard disk size
of
9.32GB. All my MP3s exist in the D:\ drive. All these MP3s occupy
almost 6GB of the hard disk space (out of the available 9.32GB in
D:\).
Since almost 70% of the hard disk space in D:\ is occupied by
MP3s, I
am running short of hard disk space in the D:\ drive to install
other
heavy-duty programs like .NET2.0, it's SDK, documentation,
tutorials,
SQL Server 2005 & it's SDK, documentation & tutorials, Visual Web
Developer 2003 Express Edition etc.

Since I am not being allowed to log into Win2K, to free up space
in
D:\, I want to delete all the folders existing in C:\ (i.e. delete
the
folders 'Documents and Settings', 'Program Files', 'WINNT' & all
the
other system files & folders/sub-folders existing in C:\) without
uninstalling the programs existing in Win2K & without removing the
user
profiles & then transfer all the MP3s existing in the D:\ drive to
the
C;\ drive (so that I can install the heavy-duty programs in D:) &
then
re-install Win2K in the C:\ drive.

What I would like to know is would such an approach be advisable?

The bottom line is I don't want WinXP Pro (which is installed in
the
D:\ drive) or the programs I have already installed in WinXP to
get
affected in any way if I take this approach. Neither should the
MP3s
in
the C:\ drive be affected in any way.


Your plan contains some contradictions:
- If you remove the folder c:\Program Files then your existing
Win2000
programs will no longer exist.
- If you remove c:\documents and settings then your user profiles
cease to exist.

Your current problems are caused by an awkward mixture of OSs
and data. You would be much better off doing this:
- Buy a 100 GByte disk and install it as a slave drive. Use it for
your
.MP3 files. Disk are cheap!
- Try to repair Win2000 on drive C:. If you cannot repair it,
re-install
it, then re-install all its applications.
- Before re-installing Win2000 on C:, save the hidden files
c:\ntldr,
c:\ntdetect.com and c:\boot.ini in a safe place. Put them back
again
when Win2000 is up and running. If you don't then you cannot boot
into WinXP.




.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Format Hard Disk
    ... So it's like that - the 2 files reside only in the boot partition.. ... As you suggested, I opened Command ... No problem....I don't intend to use the programs existing in Win2K. ... - Buy a 100 GByte disk and install it as a slave drive. ...
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    ... In a Microsoft dual boot configuration you will only see one set of these files in the root directory of the active or System partition, in your case it's completely normal that they aren't in the root of the xp drive. ... After all the experimenting and re-running of the Setup I did yesterday, I've ended up right now with old-version ntldr/ntdetect files in Win2k, but none of those sorts of files at all in XP. ... If you have already Win2K installed then you easily install WinXP on a Logical Drive. ...
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