Hi all,

I need some advice about the best way to fix an old computer.

It runs on Windows 2kpro. The C drive is clicking and takes 10x longer than it should to access things on it. Plus, it's been hit by trojans and viruses that I've cleaned (so I think). It has another drive that works fine.

What I'd like to do is start as fresh as possible with the new drive as the main and ditch the old drive. I don't want to risk carrying over any virus or trojan. What's the best way to do this? I wan't to make sure things like the network card continue to work without any problems.

Thanks a bunch for the help. I'm stuck...

LB

Formatting the drive may fix the problems.
Search for all the drivers you need on the internet then make a note of where to get them from, then u can download them with your new install.

With a bit more info about the pc i can help more, i need to know what it is and if it has a floppy drive in it.

If you need to create a boot floppy, go into dos mode with a blank floppy in the drive and type sys a:
That will make it bootable.
then type cd windows
then cd command
then copy format.com a:\

You will then have a floppy that can format any drive.

Im assuming your win2000 cd isnt bootable, so u will need dos to run your cdrom.
I can help with that but need a lot more info about your autoexec.bat and config.sys files on your pc.

Rik

Thanks for helping me out. The computer I have is an old Dell xpsr400.

Before I go further down the road you described, I have a question I just thought about. I was reading a post on this forum about installing 2 operating systems. Could I:

1. Reformat the 2nd drive to clean it up
2. Install W2k on that drive as a 2nd opperating system.
3. If everything works under that opp system, reformat or somehow remove the opp system on the 1st drive that's going bad. A problem here could be that I don't want to be stuck having to choose from a dual boot option after the 1st is gone, or the fact that it's gone screwing up something when the computer starts up.

Make sense?

Thanks again

HILARIOUS

My computer just went blue screen as I was copying info. Now on boot, I get this message:

Windows 2000 could not start because of a computer disk hadware comfiguration problem.
Could not read from the selected boot disk. Check boot path and disk hardware.
Please check the windows 2000 documentation about hardware disk configuration and your hardware reference manual for additional information.

Been working on it for 3 days - wouldn't you know it would die hours before I was through copying info off it.

SO, now I'd just like to get info off of the D drive if I cant get back C. Can I use my win2k disk to install the opp system on D and ignore C AND still keep the data on C. I think there was about 3gigs of space left on D.

oh brother...

Unplug the c and install 2k on the working drive.
You will need to set it up as the master and get the bios to detect it properly.
Then you can plug the dodgy drive in as slave and get whatever data from it that can be recovered.

You will need to set the jumper settings on the hard drives, if you have any problems or are unsure, let me know and i will do my best to help further.

This sounds perfect rik. I really appreciate this. Can you confirm/correct the order of your steps:

1. Open computer and unplug the C drive, set jumpers D to master
2. Put in win2k disk and boot
3. I will have the chance then to go into the bios and set D to boot first
4. Install w2k

Will this work since there is essentially no operating system once C is removed? Do I have a step out of order? Sorry if the questions are basic.

Check to see if the pc will boot from the windows installer cd before trying it all tho.

I think you should remove the original C: and replace it with the current D: jumpered as master. In this way, your installation CD will talk directly to the HDD in the primary (0) position of the primary IDE controller, and after installation, on reboot, will assign it the drive letter C:. After, that is established, you can install your original C: into the secondary (1) position and reboot and it should be assigned the drive letter D:. You can then go into the new D: and get everything you want to save before you reformat D:.

I think I will combine the advice and try this. I'll update later tonight on how it works. Thanks for the help. Good advice!