Reformatting hard drive

[durangokid]

I need help to reformat my hard drive. I have an small IBM computer with windows 95. I need directions on how to reformat the hard drive. The computer came with an Aptive recovery disk. Any help will be appreciated. Thanks

 

[mbaranski]

Well, the recovery disk should be bootable, and re-format it for you. I reommend letting the recovery disk do the formatting for you, and be careful, because cd-rom drivers are difficult to put on a boot disk...

Otherwise, do this:

1. Make a boot disk, you can go to a dos prompt and do

format a:
sys a:

2. copy the format.com (I think it's format.com) to the floppy disk. You can find it by doing start->find->files or folders and search for format on the c-drive.

3. Re-boot with the floppy disk in the drive, and the computer should boot to a dos prompt.

4. type a:\format c: to format the drive.

This should format it, but note that if you have a cd-rom drive, this disk will not load the cd-rom drivers. You will need to be able to load them to re-install your data, unless the CD-ROM drive is bootable.

 

[gpwolf]

Throw out the aptive disk. Reason is it wants to install proprietary software on your PC. Get a windows 98boot disk. It gives you the option of finding the cdrom or not. you can download it or get one from a friend. Also, have the win95 cd rom available to you.

1. Boot up with the win98 or win95 boot up disk.(preferably the 98).
2. Make sure your on the A:\ and type........format c:
3. It will say your about to loose everything are you sure....yes, you are....
4. Reboot with the boot98 disk and choose option 2...boot with cd rom.
5. Go to the C:\ and create a directory called Win95-------->md win95
6. Than put in your win95 cd and type at the C:\ prompt------>Copy D:\win95_*.cab
(Presumming your cd rom is the D:\)
7. Now goto the D:\ or where yuor cdrom is and type........setup.....
Follow the instructions.

 

[gpwolf]

I forgot on step 6, goto the win95 directory----> cd win95, than do the copy command

 

[rfeenie]

no need to reboot is your only formatting the c: drive and not re partitioning it. cd drivers will be loaded in memory if w98 boot disk more likely that CD-Rom drive is E:

 

[mbaranski]

Be careful of "throwing out" the aptiva disk, some of the hardware drivers for your PC may not be avalible in the starndard Win 95 distribution, so you may either have to get them from that dis or d/l them from IBM. That my be the only way to get some of your components to work.

Also, if you're going to the trouble of re-loading 95, you should use version c (This is the one where the cd-rom says "with usb support&quot as it is much better than the older vresions.

Same with 98, don't install it unless it is 2nd edition.

When you run c:\win95\setup, you can type
c:\win95\setup /is

to skip the scandisk, which if you're sure your disk is ok can save some time.

MWB