Format drive "c"

[mouse1]

Good morning people...Man have I got a problem..
My modem still willnot let me disconect and I get this program has performed and illegal oppration and will shutdown, with several programs,,I have purchased the new Nortons AV 2003 run a system scan and found nothing..I'm running win 98se,and have the HDD patitioned into two sections,Now my real concern is can I format drive "C" only and save everything on drive "d"?? TIA..GaryD.

[Force Flow]

Yes. When you say "format c:" it will leave anyother drives untouched. What you are telling it to do is format only drive C.

Now, if you have progs installed on your D drive, you will need to reinstall them because they will not be recognized by your new O/S on drive C after formatting.

[Iman74]

That depends on the condition of D. But as far as formating C:; that will not have a effect on the stability of your files on D:. However if you loaded apps on D:, you will have to reload them when you re-format and load the OS on C:.

[Redo40]

Yes. That's the whole reason I have more than one partition, but if you have any programs on D: you will need to reinstall them most likely.


Once again my slow typing! Beat me to it guys.

[mouse1]

Thankyou guys for responding so quickly..Now to format "c" I just put the startup disk in and type format:c/s?? Is that right?? Then reinstal the OS,and all of the progy's I need,right??TIA..GaryD.

[Iman74]

That is true. You boot up to the Win98 boot disk and do just that.
Also, you do have the option with NT, 98, 2000, and XP to just boot to the CD and do that as well.

[pillainp]

You don't have to do the /s bit. Just Format c: will do fine. Your bootdisk will give you all the boot you need when you reinstall Windows 98SE. And Windows installation will load all the DOS system files onto the boot sector anyway (which is what the format c:\s switch is meant for), and simply overwrite the files you wrote to HDD with the /s switch. It was only ever really necessary in the days of DOS and Win95, IMHO.

[mouse1]

Thank you guys,now, I have also purchased win 2000 pro, IS "2000 pro" NTFS,or fat32,and will the programs that I have that operate with win 98se going to work with win 2000??If I deside load win2000 pro...TIA..GaryD..

[HAL9000]

Save yourself some time and do FORMAT C:/Q to do a quick format.

[pillainp]

mouse1,
if you do have win2K Pro, go for it. it's much more stable and will give you a lot less hassles. If you do install it, use NTFS. it's the native Win2K file systemand has a lot of advantages.

And yes, most of your Win98 programs should work fine under Win2K, with the exception of true DOS apps, which may give you a little trouble. But it's worth losing a few small apps for the gains you will get.

Check for hardware and software compatibility here:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000...at/default.asp

[Force Flow]

Yes, if you're installing win2k, you'll get better perfomance by formatting the C drive in NTFS. You will still be able to read the FAT32 partition (drive D) if you choose to go NTFS, so that won't be an issue.

[mouse1]

Thanks again for the help,sorry for my late response back, but had to go into town and it took a little longer than I'd hoped.So I guess I will try win 2K and see how it works for me,, thank you all again and god bless you all...GaryD.