Need a hand exorcising windows

[Jublian]

Windows 2000 pro's giving me crazy blue screens (bad pool caller) and won't let me install a TV-Wonder, among other problems...
The OS has it's own partition - I'd like to reformat and reinstall...
I've already tried updating all (to my knowledge) drivers

1) Is there anyway I can do it without making the four boot disks? An easy way to make a bootable cd?
2) Is there anyway I can clean up windows without having to reinstall absolutely everything?


Any tips, suggestions? I'm hesitant 'cause I don't know anybody with computer smarts who lives around me and I get all my tech help through e-mail, this place, etc...

Thanks

 

[Patgod]

well, if your Fdisk'n your trubbles away just use a 9x boot disk which you can get the files for off the net.

you could boot from the CD into the install screen. there is an option to "repair OS" if i remember correctly you will loose your registry, however the files on your hard drive will be intact. it wont be any fun having to run exe's directly for a while, but at least you wont loose your files.

 

[nightowl]

The Win2k cd is already bootable. You just have to tell your BIOS to look at your CD drive before going to the hard drive when booting.

 

[Jublian]

Woo! You guys are fast!

Okay, say I don't mind reinstalling...
Can I get a command prompt booting with the win2k cd?
Can I reformat the partition and reinstall with just the win2k cd? I don't have a 9x cd around.... and I don't have highspeed, if I need to get crazy files...


Thanks

I'm also having problems with windows finding my hard drive - it boots up okay (though it may take several tries, what with BSODs and all) but when I try to boot with the cd, it can't find the hd.... I've got four ide slots on my mb... ASUS A7V/133 and it can only find the HD when it's plugged into the primary ATA100 slot...

 

[Jublian]

oh yeah... lemme update the ata100 drivers...

but as for the other questions?

 

[Patgod]

9x boot disks are under 1.44mb so dont act like its all that much downloading even on 56k

if your using your ata/100 you should only need to put the cd into the drive and reboot. it will say "bootable CD detected" and you go from there. if you need to get into dos for some reason then you have to go http://www.bootdisk.com/ and grab like a windows 98 first edition boot disk and go run it from there.

 

[Jublian]

aight..

so then I just boot into dos, format c:
reboot with the win2k cd and reinstall?

 

[nightowl]

If you are going to format and reinstall just boot from the Win2k CD and follow the the instructions. It will give you the option to reformat your partition.

 

[Jublian]

so I don't even have to go to dos...

I guess that's alright.......


Thanks alot