xp back to millenium?

[pileon]

i was running xp on my hard drive, but decided to go back to millenium, but i can't seem to get it to work i keep getting the error 'cannot create files on startup if u have hpfs or nt file... etc need to create ms-dos boot partition
if anyone could help i would be very grateful becouse it's driving me round the bend

thanks again

[Wiggo]

Sounds like the drive needs to be Fdisk'd and delete all logical and non logical partitions then repartitioned and formated before you'll be able to put ME back on. : peace2:
<center>:cheers:</center>

[vegaboo]

Yeah you have to reformat your Hard drive.
I am curious though, why you wanna change to ME and not using XP? and also.. FYI I'd rather use 98 se than ME.. ME is the suckiest MS has to offer for OS :rolleyes:

[Wiggo]

Maybe the pc either doesn't have the horsepower or XP won't work with current hardware/software are usually the main reasons for doin' so. ;)
<center>:cheers:</center>

[Bahamut Zer0]

If you went from ME to XP, your partition type probably changed from FAT32 to NTFS. You cannot go backwards once that has happened. You will need to fdisk the drive and start again. (Install Windows, apps etc)

Id go with Win2k, or WinXP if your system has the grunt and you like purdy colors. These days, investing the time/effort and money into a Win9x based OS is useless. Especially true given the multimedia capabilities we have today. (DVD etc)

[yuri yavari]

I have heard on ocassion that sometimes people had better luck using XP by using fat32,than with ntfs. I am no authority,but I have heard this more than once.

[sagoth66]

I ran XP on fat32 for a good few months and it was ok but the searches took forever, and fast search indexing can only be used on an NTFS drive (as well as some other features such as encryption) so I converted the drive to NTFS using the command CONVERT which you can start while windows is up (see help topics)
Since then I can search files rapidly, and the system is still rock solid, and possibly a little quicker too

[Bahamut Zer0]

Ah yes, the joys of NTFS. As ive mentioned numerous times before on this board, FAT32 is extremly limiting in both is capabilities and performance. The only good thing about it is it can be read/written to from other operating systems. Thats about it though.

As for XP benefitting from FAT32- unlikely. As XP is an NT based operating system, it will surely benefit more from an NT-File System over a FAT32.

[pileon]

i've tried fdisk and deleting the partitions but it won't let me delete one of them it says it can't because of the logical drivers, any ideals would be welcome

[Wiggo]

Ok here's what ya do,

Go here and download and save to hard drive the "DOS50.EXE - Bootdisk for MS-DOS V5.00" then open it. That will ask you for a floppy for it to be installed on.

Now Fdisk the drive with that as the bit you need to get rid of will just show as a non logical drive and you can delete it.

Sometimes Fdisk in DOS6 and above won't unmount this sector but DOS5 will. ;)
<center>:cheers:</center>

[pileon]

it won't let me down load the boot disk

[pileon]

sorry to be a pain, but managed to down load ms dos disk but now it's saying there is a compressed volume or disk cache utility and it still won't install.... i think i'm cursed
thanks for any help:

[Bahamut Zer0]

Just boot from your Win2k/XP CD and delete the partitions from there. If you have a linux distro lying around, you could boot from that and also delete your partitions.

[pileon]

thanks for the help, it sorted it out