reformatting windows NT 4.0 machine.. please help!

[SKC]

hi all,

work is going to donate some older PCs from the office. I need to reformat them (all running NT 4.0 workstation), and I've tried using NT boot disks-- but the machines don't seem to boot at all from the floppy drive. I've also tried using win2k pro cd to format the drives, but something seems to be wrong with the CD. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

thanks!

 

[Granorense]

Can you boot from the floppy, if not you have to go into bios and change your boot sequence and set A to be the first boot option.

I usually use a windows 98 startup diskette to reformat ntfs and fat systems.

 

[SKC]

thanks for quick reply..

I was able to get it to boot from generic boot disk (with basic utilities), but now c: is an invalid drive specification. Any suggestions?

update: file system is ntfs.. are there any specific utilities/drivers I should include on the boot disk to be able to read/write to the hd?

thanks!

 

[kurt454]

Fdisk will delete an NTFS partition if it is a primary partition. Microsoft also has a little utility called Delpart, that will delete NTFS partitions.

 

[SKC]

after 2 days of reinstalling and searching..

fdisk.

..forgot about that.

sigh.

thanks for your help!

 

[13black]

NTFS will show up as a non dos partition when you use fdisk. I haven't had any problems using it to delete NTFS or fat partitions, but if you do delpart should take car of it.

 

[redbeard1]

...beating the dead horse...

Win98se fdisk will delete ntfs partitions. They are called non dos partitions.

I have seen windows systems that had odd things happening when I went to try and fdisk and format them. I overcame those problems by using the floppies that Partition Magic can make and using it to remove the partitions on the troublesome system. At the worst, you could download the hard drive makers diagnostic disk and wipe it by writing zero's to the disk. This will reset it back to it's base setting, and erase data fairly well.