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Posted
on October 12, 2001 by Thomas
McGuire
Hard
Drive Setup
NOTE
- If you intend to merely install Windows in your current
partition then you may skip onto the next step.
Before
installing Windows you'll need to prepare your Hard drive
for installation of it. I'd recommend using a Windows 98/Me
Boot disk for the following procedure, should you intend to
install Windows 2000 this still holds true as you can make
File System changes during installation, or later if
required (I’ll cover using the Windows 2000 Boot Disks/CD
anyway though).
Insert
the Windows 98/Me Boot
disk &
reboot your Computer. Enter your systems BIOS & set it
to boot from the Floppy drive first. Save the change to the BIOS Settings & reboot.
Once
this disk has been booted from (To a Command
prompt)
type in FDISK
& hit Enter.
Select Yes when asked to enable Large disk
support. The following screen will then appear.
The
first thing to do is to Delete your existing
Installation partition using Option 3 (You may delete
more if you wish, although this isn't advisable if you have
backed up data on others of course). Once these have been
deleted you can partition your hard drive to better suit
your needs. If the Hard drive is fairly small (4 Gigabyte or
less) then you would probably be best off with just 1.
Although larger Hard drives may well be better off with 2 or
3 depending on size.
Select
Option 1 in the FDISK Options menu to Create
DOS partition or
Logical
DOS Drive
.
Again,
select Option 1 to Create Primary DOS Partition.
This is the partition where Windows shall be installed. If
you intend to only use 1 partition then you should set all
Hard drive space to this partition.
Use
Option 2 (Create Extended DOS Partition) to
create any extra partitions if necessary.
Finally,
in the main FDISK Options menu ensure with Option 2
that the Primary partition (PRI DOS) is set to
Active.
Exit
FDISK & type EXIT & hit Enter to
reboot your system.
Once
more allow the Boot disk to take you to a Command Prompt.
Type in FORMAT x, where x specifies the
partition to be formatted. I'd recommend you do this to each
of the partitions you created. Now type in EXIT &
hit Enter to reboot your system to move onto the next
step, installing your Operating System.
Should
you intend to use the Windows 2000 Boot Disks/CD use the
following procedure instead.
Insert
the Windows 2000 Boot
disk or CD & reboot your
Computer. Enter your systems BIOS & set it to boot from
the Floppy (Or
CD
Drive
)
drive first. Save
the change to the BIOS Settings & reboot.
After re-booting you will
have additional installation option available.
1.
Press ENTER to – Setup
Windows 2000 now.
2.
Next a list of Partitions
available for installation will appear. Use the C key
to Create a partition in the unpartitioned space as
you see fit (Using the Guidelines mentioned before), while
use D to Delete the selected partition.
3.
Next comes up certain file
system format options for the selected partition. Choices
available being as follows;
Format
the partition using the NTFS file system.
Format
the partition using the FAT file system.
Convert
the partition to NTFS.
Leave the current
file system intact (no changes).
I’d recommend selecting
Format the partition using the NTFS file system as
NTFS has more benefits than the FAT32 file system (more
secure, handles larger partitions better & so on). Much
of the extra overhead related to NTFS can also be disabled,
although this is covered in our Tweak guides.
Now
insert the Operating System CD you wish to install. Should
you need to, insert any Boot disk also if CD booting is
unavailable. NOTE - Using Windows 2000 Boot disks ensure you
have inserted the Disk labelled 1, as instructed
earlier.
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