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How do I prepeare my hard drive for a fresh install?

Posted By : Michael of Chandler-Gilbert Community College on May 8, 2001

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I recently had my hard drive formatted to remove remnants of a windows NT installation. I apparently lost all of my DOS also. When attempting to install Win 98 after booting up the windows logo flashes once and I get this message: "Type the name of command interpreter e.g., c:\WINDOWS\COMMAND.COM"

and that's where it stops. How do I get my dos back so I can install my o/s?

This question was answered on May 8, 2001. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting.


Well, your going to need to create a "boot floppy" which would contain the nessesary files to boot, in order to gain access to your hard drive from your A drive In addition you will want some basic programs on it also that will aid you in setting up your hard rive again, some of these are; FORMAT.COM, and FDISK.EXE It helps if you have the basic cd-rom drivers for later when you want to gain access to that device also, in order to use your installation CD-Rom

You can create a boot floppy of your own by formating a floppy on another computer Except, when it asks if you want to include system files, do so If you use a dos format progrom, add the switch /s after designating the drive to be formatted, as it will not ask if you want those files added to the formatted floppy The name of the basic cd-rom driver that you will want to copy to the floppy for future use is MSCDEX.EXE

Install this floppy in your drive and boot to it Perform the same actions to transfer the files stored on the floppy to the C: drive If you used the /s switch with the format command you should have the needed files on the hard drive now to boot (Note: It is not enough just copy the files over to the hard drive! Use the Format and switch command to install them correctly.) All that remains then is to patition, install the cd-rom drivers and reboot.

After rebooting you should be able to access the D: drive (or your CD-ROM) Use the DIR command to show files on your installation disk if you wish to view them, but all you should need to do to begin the installation process is type SETUP and hit enter from within the D: drive The installation wizard will guide you through the rest.

Thank you for your question...

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Posted by Michael of Chandler-Gilbert Community College on May 8, 2001

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