trying to refresh Windows 2000 install

[HTcracker]

How can I do a reinstall of win 2000 over a working win 2000
I used to do this pretty regularly with win 98 and win 95
whenever things got to buggy after installs,uninstalls etc.
But now I have a dual boot win 98 and win 2000 system on two seperate HDs. The original installation of win 2000 was
a miserable pain in the butt (due to HDs being on promise
ata100 controllers)and I dont want to partition and run a complete fresh install. A cleanup seems to be in order but when I try running the win2000 disc from either OS/HD it doesnt give me a fix/repair option,and it modifies my boot loader.

 

[Whitedog]

You can't run setup over Top of the existing OS like you can 98... 98 is a sloppy OS.

You can either upgrade an existing OS or run a fresh install with Win2000.

I suggest if you are having problems with your 2k, reinstall it from scratch. If you get a Good install, it will last.. no matter what you do.

I've had this install since it hit Gold (Dec 99), I've uninstalled, reinstalled TONS of apps, patches, updates, clients, drivers...etc.. and it still works like a champ.

 

[igiveup]

Try booting from CD. It will give you a Repair option after it automatically finds your win 2k install. It shouldn't take too long either. Say 20 minutes or so.

 

[HTcracker]

Ok.. if I cant reinstall then Ill have to find the solution another way. My problem is that Ive completely messed up my cd-rom and cd-rw.
they have worked ok since the original install(as cd-rom) but I didnt
notice that the burner wouldnt burn untill recentlly.It worked fine in
win 98 and all we really used it for was MP3s but the wife uses win 2000 for secure household stuff and tried to back up some files at which time we discovered it would not burn.the original error was
"device reserved by other process,drive reporting unknown error. 0x80000001a" over a couple of weeks I uninstalled and re installed
the original plexwriter firmware disc as well as the included adaptec easy cd creator and direct cd. with no change. I tried changing DMA
and even downloaded win SP2. I bought and installed roxio easy cd creator 5 platinum and downloaded the patch.no change. I unstalled
everything (after discovering at the MS homepage that win 2000 doesnt
support this software) and downloaded the Nero demo software.
well now all of a sudden I have a yellow exclamentation point in front of each CD device in the device manager section of win 2000 (it cant load the drivers). Ive uninstalled everything and I cant get win 2000
to find the two CDs. Im aware of the problems adaptec/roxio are haveing with win 2000 but dont know if this is the root of my problems
or if I have just installed and uninstalled one time to often.
I know that a lot of people who follow these forums tend to tune out
the longer more complex problems (thats the reason I was after a quick
fix by a re install of win 2000)I figured any problem that took more then 4 or 5 lines to describe would be ignored. So...... anyone willing to take a stab at my problem? your help is greatlly apreciated.
thanx

 

[HTcracker]

Oh and I tried your sugestion of booting from CD and selecting repair
I ended up at D:\winint (I think) looked like DOs and completly
lost me.

 

[lilnnjaboy]

Cracker....few things...the plextor plexwriter drives themselves do not have conflicts with in win2k. I know cuz I have tried old 4 x plex writers and the new 16x and the 12x drives. All work great under win2k. If you are having trouble detecting your drives in win2k under adaptec....you need to uprgrade your adaptec to 4.03 before installing any service packs. The service packs will not allow an upgrade of the Easy CD creator.

In terms of CD Creator 5...I had it work for me...and haven't seen any issues on that.

What I do recommend is that you back up all your info on another computer or harddrive since you can't burn....wipe out your system....and start clean....fdisk and format your drives...and start. Once you messed up your system...it'll always have problems...

 

[MooShoe]

There is another option when booting from the CD. If you boot from the CD, instead of selecting the "Repair" option the first time, select install win2k, or whatever it is.

On the next page, it will say something like it found an existing install of win2k and give you the option to repair this install, or install a fresh copy. Try using the second repair option. This will do just about an entire re-install of the OS.