Marlene2

We have an HP that originally came with ME installed on it.
We upgraded to 2000 pro. We are giving the computer to a nephew and want to take the 200 pro off and take it back to factory. I put the ME
disc in the pc and made sure it was set to boot from cd thinking it would just go ahead and boot from the cd and I would be able to reinstall ME.
It comes up with an error "hard disk was not found".
It goes on to say "You may need to run the FDisk program to initialize the disk. C:/

When I type in fdisk at the c prompt it asks:
Do you wish to enable large disk support? I answer Y.
Then should NTFS partitions on all drives be treated as large? I answer Y.
Enter choice: I entered 1
Then Create Primary Dos partition (1)

Then it comes up with: "Current fixed disk drive:1 No space to create a Dos Partition.

And thats as far as I get.
Can someone please help with this. I am obviously doing something wrong here.

mommabear

Are you using an HP restore disk or a Windows Me cd?

The first thing that comes to mind is that you should fdisk again. Use a 98/Me floppy boot disk to do that. That should bring up the FAT32 file system. Windows Me is Fat32, not NTFS.

You might have to change your BIOS to boot to floppy first. I have my BIOS set to boot to floppy first, cdrom second, and lastly my hdd all the time. That way I don't have to go back and forth to make changes. It'll just search for whatever might be there before Windows comes up.

If you've got a Windows Me CD:

After fdisk, restart the computer (ctrl/alt/del) with the boot disk still in. Choose the option to boot with cdrom support. #2, I think. As it boots up it'll tell you the new (temporary) drive letter for your cdrom. If there's only one, then it'll probably change to E drive. Make note of it.

At the command A:\> you should type in "format c:" (without the quotes) and press Enter. Looks like this:

A:\>format c:

There is a space between format and c: If you get a bad command message and go back to the A prompt, then put a space between the ">" and "format..." also. My old notes are a bit hard to read.

I can't remember if Windows Me will boot from the CD, if that's what you have. I don't think it does. So after formatting c: you should be back at the A:\> prompt. Remove the floppy, and put the Windows disk in, wait for the drive to stop blinking. At the A prompt, type in E: (or whatever the drive letter that was assigned when you booted up) and press Enter again.

When formatting is complete, the prompt should change to E:\> (or whatever the drive letter is.) At that time type "setup.exe" (no quotes) and press Enter. The Windows Me disk should start spinning up and the install should proceed.

If setup.exe doesn't work and you get the bad command message, try win9x\setup.exe at the E:\> prompt.

Now if you've got an HP recovery disk rather than a Windows Me CD, I "think" you can boot up with it after format c, and restarting your computer with the recovery disk in the cdrom drive. Or maybe even after just doing fdisk in Fat 32. I'm not sure about that. Just remember to take out the floppy first.

hitech

when you run fdisk,do as before until you get to your options. Then choose no. 3-delete, delete partition or logical drive, then choose 4-delete non-dos partition. Follow the instuctions, then hit esc to main menu and enter 1-create dos partition. follow instuctions and answer yes when ask to make it active. then it will tell you to reboot. when you do you will have to format c: at the prompt. Notice the space after format. It's been a long time, the ME disk might promt you to format.
Good Luck

Marlene2

Thanks so much for your help.
Decided to go with hitech because it seemed less complicated.
As of right now I am (or the pc is) reloaded ME!

THANK YOU SO MUCH! YOU MADE IT SOUND SO SIMPLE AND ITS WORKING FANTASTIC!

Thanks again!
Marlene2

hitech

Your Welcome, Been a long time since fdisk