Installing windows 98 over nt

[Reedimus]

I installed windows nt on an old p166 laptop and my wife wants windows 98. In the past I have just put in the windows 98 cd and installed it, but I've never done it over windows nt. I am trying to figure out how this is done. it won't just run the cd because it says something about a dos environment. anyone know how I can get rid of windows nt and put windows 98 on? any help would be appreciated.

[K A Hall]

You are going to have to format the drive and reinstall Win98.

[GaryRouth]

Hi Reedimus

Unfortunately, K A Hall is correct. Those two versions of Windows use different file formats and even different bootloaders. You can multiboot to both if you put Win98 in first (using the FAT32 file system), saving a separate partition for NT, which you would format with the NTFS (New Technology File System).

I'm guessing that the hard drive isn't all that large, since it sounds like an older laptop, so going with just Win98 on it might be your best option. It's a nice quick little Windows, and should run well on a P166 . . . especially if you can get the memory up to or about 128mb. (64mb isn't bad . . . but will be just a bit slower)

. . .Gary

[Reedimus]

Thanks for the replies. unfortunately, I haven't gotten very far. I booted the laptop from a windows 98 boot disk and got to the A prompt. I type "Format C:" and I get the message "cannot format a network drive". I don't know where it's getting this network idea. it's an external floppy, if that's what it's talking about. Any help would, again, be greatly appreciated.

[GaryRouth]

Hi again

Try the Win98 bootdisk again, this time at the A: prompt type fdisk and choose the option (I think it's #4) that offers to show the partition status of the drive. What partitions do you see?

Probably a good idea to delete what's there and start over, creating one DOS primary partition to hold your Win98 install.

post again if fdisk won't work, or anything else interesting comes up
. . . Gary

[Reedimus]

That took care of the problem. Thanks a lot!