Hiya,

I probably post this in the wrong forum. Please move this thread if I do...

I want to format a (ntfs partitioned) harddisk from a compaq evo n150 notebook. I cannot access the usb floppy drive during booting. (I tried to flash the bios but stil doesn't support usb booting). I can boot from a cdromdrive so I've made a resque bootdisk from partition magic (normally on floppy) but this gives me an error during booting....

How (in the hell) can I format this thing? I want to remove this xp pro and replace it with w2k.....but cannot downgrade the OS because Ms won't let me....there must be a way, a tool or something......

couple of things.

get a win 98 cd and boot from it. boot to command prompt with cd support and fdisk the drive.

get a copy of knoppix and format the drive. heck for that matter the gentoo stage 1 cd has a great little fdisk partitioning utility on it and the whole d/l is 150 megs.


Maybe someone else would have some other suggestion thats all i can think of right now. Good luck...btw you might want to check out bootdisk.com they have this how-to for nero a floppie and a burner. Nero boot cd from floppy

G/L
G.i.P

BTW do you have another working system with a burner. that info might help in throwing up suggestions.

why don't you just boot from the 2000 cd and partition/format the drive from there?

What Joe said.

It would be the easiest most sensible way of doing it.

maybe it's not bootable

Or use the XP CD to remove partitions / format

Or make a windows XP PE-CD from your Xp-CD

Sometimes things are so very obvious that you can't see them....anyway, booted from cd and formating went well.....

thanks guys