Any chance on helping a newbe with a Win2k prob

[kpzbee]

This is a really good board! :) I did search first, but couldn't find the answers I needed. I installed Win2k pro with an update disc with a clean install to replace 98. I have a couple of problems. 1st is that on startup, I get a black screen with 2 options (one for just windows) that does nothing but sit there. I have to reset to get going. It seems to run fine (so far) but I have found where it kept most of my old files! I figured with a clean install, it would reformat the drive & start new. It shows I'm useing over 6 gigs on my hard drive. :( Anyone else run into this? I really appreciate any help. Thanks.

[YARDofSTUF]

well i recomend u make a win98se/me bootdisc and format then install

u can install from the upgrade cd i believe, u just need to insert a full version of win98 or so when it prompts u too.

[JackHamma96]

If you want to start windows 2000 automatically. Do this


1. Right click on "MY COMPUTER"(desktop), and go down to properties.

2. When the system properties dialog comes up go to the "Advanced" tab.

3. Under the advanced tab go down to Startup & Recovery

4. Under default Operating system, choose the OS you want to start up with.

5. Then after choosing the OS you want to boot up with, uncheck the box that says "Display list of operating systems for".

that should do it:D restart your PC and see if it works.

I had the same thing happen to me except I had to reinstall Windows 2k, so the screen kept showing up on boot-up saying if I wanted to load Windows 2000 Professional or Windows 2000 Professional :rolleyes:

Thats the only problem I can help you fix, and all thats done under windows 2000! The rest I cant help you with, im an average PC user:(

[kpzbee]

One down & one to go!! :) I'm only "average" at best myself. :rolleyes: I'm hopeing to figure out the file copying.
YardOstuff, I did make one on my old 98 (not se) & it did not ask for such a thing. :confused: The install went smooth. It does run nice compaired to the 98.

[The Dude]

If you boot to your windows 98 floppy you should get a dos prompt C:\. From there you could formate your hardrive if you want to do a clean install. You could use fdisk to really erase the hard drive and partition it if you like. Windows 2k uses a set of 3 floppies to install to a blank hard drive or if you can boot from a cdrom in your bios, you can install from the cd without the floppies. There is a utility on the win 2k cd to create the floppies but i can't remember its name. I don't believe you can upgrade from win 98 to 2k so when you install 2k you get the boot selection screen. If you install them both on the same partition they install in separate directories but i think it will only give you problems as you install software latter, shared folders and files.

[richardc]

Hi kpzbee - this is just a guess as I don't know what is on your w2k CD, but I favor a clean install, especially as you will probably have a great many updates to add to your 6 gigs.
For example SP1, SP2 and eventually SP3.
As someone suggested,boot with a Win 98 startup disk, format C:\ and reinstall W2K.
There are two or three ways - one is by rebooting off your W2K CD if you can. Another, is after the reformat, reboot with the startup disk, load the CDROM drivers, run smartdr.exe, which should be on your bootdisk, change directory to your CDROM drive, then CD to the i386 folder and run winnt.exe. That should start the install.

[YeOldeStonecat]

You don't need a 95/98 boot disk to FDISK and format your drive at all, booting from any NT cd (which yes includes 2K and XP), you'll get your setup menu, in which you can easily delete/create partitions, and format them however you wish.

What you did was an install over your old OS....a "clean" install would have been to format your partition from the 2K setup, then install.

[richardc]

You are corrrect YeOldeStonecat, but given his "problems" with W2K, I was suggesting he do as little as possible in W2k and as much as possible in a familar Win98/DOS environment.

[kpzbee]

It seems I have most of my problems licked. I had problems getting it to "see" the new drivers I had to load in for my Riptide sound card & my HP printer. (My pc is an HP Pavilion) After doing some reading & changing a setting in the BIOS, the printer works. I finally got the right sequence to load the Riptide driver in. What I started to do was go in & delete all the old files I don't need, or won't work. It copied the old windows folder from 98. I deleted most of that. That dopped it to under 4 gigs & with loading most all of my programs back in, it's still under 6gigs. I still have 12.4 gigs free. Stonecat is right, I didn't have to do any of that. I did pick the clean install option when it loaded. What it did was convert all the files to a different format(?) which took about 20 min or so. I had the option to partition the h/d, but I passed. (didn't know what that meant really) Oh, I did get the SP2 & the security update for it. From rereading your posts while typing this, it sounds like it did overlay it? & it didn't reformat the h/d? My brother did this same thing a few months ago with the overlay option & he had many more problems than I. He even said his seemed to setup diffferent than mine. I guess I'll just keep moving forward from here. Again, Thank you for your help! I keep coming back here to read up (learn) on all the different topics. It's a great board. I spend a bunch of time on Ramtruck chat lending my expertice over there. Ah the internet - What would we do without it?!! :D