uninstall and reinstall

[paras]

How do I uninstall Win NT 4.0 from A desktop (stand alone) computer? I have two NTFS partitions on my harddrive and I'd like to repartition it , once I have unistalled NT. Please be as specific as possible.

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1- I'm running NT 4.0 Workstation on a PII 400Mhz standalone desktop for about 2 years without problems. Recently, I started having trouble with using NetZero to logon to the web(system hangs once zCast.exe-Netzero's app starts up)and after much effort to resolve this through NetZero's Tech Support, I was told to uninstall and reinstall NT on my machine, after I clean out everything in the harddrive (system files, etc)
2- I want to reinstall NT 4.0 after I repartition the Hard drive. I have a bootup disk for Win 98 (I understand I need it to clean out system files after removing NT partitions). I also have my NT 4.0 original CD.
3- I am considering the option of installing Win 2000 as well.
Please provide step by step instructions for the removal of NT 4.0, the removal of the 2 NTFS partitions I now have,and cleaning out any remaining system files that must be deleted with DOS bootup and how to reinstall NT-4.0 on a clean Hard drive.

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thanks

[paras]

hi there.

i did find out the right way to get this done.

if you have NTFS for your NT installation, you should remove the NTFS partition before installing another operating system. if you have data files on that NTFS partition which you want to keep, make a backup of them. do this onto a storage device with FAT volumes because this is an effective and fast way to make them available to the OS you move to.

there are two parts to removing NTFS partitions:
1. the NTFS partitions
2. the NTFS boot partition
the latter must be done wtih a MS-DOS FDISK program.

removing an NTFS volume can become difficult because some versions of MS-DOS FDISK
program cannot delete an NTFS volume.

no version of the MS-DOS FDISK program can remove an NTFS logical drive in an
extended MS-DOS partition. use the Disk Administrator for this.

probably the easiest way to remove an NTFS partition is with the NT Setup program used to create these partitions. this is how you do it.

1. insert the windows NT setup disk 1 and restart your computer (i.e. boot with the setup disk 1)
2. insert setup disk 2 when prompted
3. press Enter at the "Welcome to Windows NT Setup" screen
4. press Enter to automatically detect your mass storage devices or press "S" if you have to manually specify them. i think in your case you just press Enter.
5. insert setup disk 3 when prompted
6. press Enter when you have specified all necessary device drivers
7. press Page Down and when you reach the bottom of the page (license agreement), press F8
8. change your computer settings as necessary when asked and press Enter
9. select the NTFS partition you wish to delete and press "D"
10. press "L" to confirm deletion. the partition will now show up as free space in the partitions list
11. press F3 to exit NT Setup
12. press Enter to restart your computer.

to delete NTFS partitions, you can also use the Disk Administrator but not the boot
partition. that must be done with the FDISK DOS utility. (make sure you have a version of
MS-DOS FDISK that can delete NTFS partitions). so after you have deleted the NTFS partitions either from the Disk Administrator or from the setup disks as described above, get hold of the MS-DOS FDISK utility and run it on your hard disk. this will delete all the partitions. you may also consider formatting you disk.

i think that with this the thread can be closed.

paras

[Timgerr]

what you need to do is get rid of the NTFS partitions by booting the computer with the win98 boot disk. At the a: type in fdisk. Then go to option 3 to delete partions, use the option to delete non dos partitions. If you do this, you will lose all data!!!! once done with this creat a dos partition and format it in fat16. Once this partition is created you should boot the computer with the NT 4.0 disks or boot the computer with win2k disk to in stall the OS.

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The Difficult we do immediately, the Imposable takes a bit longer.

[paras]

hi there.

i worked on the solution roadmap outlined above by me and it worked.

thanks anyway guys for all you inputs.

will keep on cyber tech.

have a nice day.

paras