uninstall winxp

winston · Post by **winston** » 14 Apr 2005 10:23 am

Does anyone know how to uninstall xp pro from a computer so I can go back to win98? Someone brought me a laptop p2 with 128 ram and 4g harddrive. The computer just barely runs with xp and I cannot get it to uninstall. thanks winston may

Don Poland · Post by **Don Poland** » 14 Apr 2005 11:12 am

Winston, I am no computer guru but will offer this, if you have a bootable disc for win98, you could just reformat the hard drive and start with a clean installation of win98. Not sure if there are files you are needing to keep, but if there are, just back them up to another computer or external hard drive and go from there. IMHO I think this is the best route to go. Good Luck

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winston · Post by **winston** » 14 Apr 2005 11:59 am

Don, I have already tried that. Seems when xp is installed the computer will not boot from the win98 floppy or cd.

Dave Potter · Post by **Dave Potter** » 14 Apr 2005 1:19 pm

May need to get into the bios and select the floppy as the 1st boot device if booting from that is what you want.

I doubt there's any way to get rid of XP and go back to Win98 without reformatting the drive. Disclaimer: you'll lose everything you don't have backed up. As a last resort, in XP "My Computer", if you highlight a drive and open the "File" dropdown at the top of the screen, there's a "Format" option.

winston · Post by **winston** » 14 Apr 2005 1:33 pm

Don, Losing everything is not a problem. What I am saying is that xp will NOT boot from a floppy disk. That is what I have been trying to do so I can reformat. I put the boot sequence to boot from floppy, cdrom, then harddisk. WinXP does not recognize the 98 boot disk is there. winston may

Papa Joe Pollick · Post by **Papa Joe Pollick** » 14 Apr 2005 2:16 pm

Winston,I'm certainly not a GURU,but it seems to me that you should be able to make an XP start up disk that will have F-DISK on it.Then F-DISK would clean the HD,then you can format.Make sense?
I love to format,I call it revenge,don't mess with me damn puter..
I'm sure there is some one here who can help.
Good luck.
P.J.

Don Walters · Post by **Don Walters** » 14 Apr 2005 4:28 pm

Winston, it may be a bad floppy disk, or even a bad floppy drive. If both are OK, the computer will boot before WinXP is involved ... XP is on the hard drive and if that's your 3rd boot choice, it should never get to XP if the floppy & drive are OK.
[This message was edited by Don Walters on 14 April 2005 at 05:28 PM.]

Jack Stoner · Post by **Jack Stoner** » 15 Apr 2005 2:24 am

One of the problems could be if the hard drive is formatted with NTFS instead of FAT. DOS will not recognize a hard drive with NTFS.

But, you should be able to create a "startup diskette" for XP and use tht to fdisk then format the hard drive for FAT32. You will also need a startup diskette that defines the CD drive for DOS so you can load Win98 from the CD. The older BIOS systems, such as on that PC do not directly support the CD drives for booting, like the newer systems do.

winston · Post by **winston** » 15 Apr 2005 4:13 am

You guys are probably right. This thing has an add on floppy drive. I have to get the computer to boot from it. thanks winston

Dave Potter · Post by **Dave Potter** » 15 Apr 2005 4:55 am

<< This thing has an add on floppy drive. I have to get the computer to boot from it. thanks winston

Or, simply use the "Format" option in "My Computer" when XP is running, as I suggested earlier.

winston · Post by **winston** » 15 Apr 2005 5:32 am

Dave
I just tried what you suggested, came up windows cannot format this drive. I am sure it will have to be done from a floppy disk.
winston may

Dave Potter · Post by **Dave Potter** » 15 Apr 2005 6:06 am

OK. I suspected Windows might not cooperate with an attempt to format it's own root drive, but since the option was shown and not greyed out, I figured it was worth a try. Sorry for the bum steer.

I tried it up to the point of executing it, but cancelled at that point since I didn't want to risk formatting my C: drive.[This message was edited by Dave Potter on 15 April 2005 at 08:52 AM.]

Jonathan Cullifer · Post by **Jonathan Cullifer** » 16 Apr 2005 6:35 pm

I assume you're installing Windows 98 from a full CD and not one of those upgrade CDs.

You don't need to format the drive before you install Windows 98; the first part of the setup will do it.

If the computer has a builtin CD player, you can boot directly off the Windows 98 SE CD, if you can configure the computer to boot off the CD. There's got to be a way to boot off either a floppy or the CD directly, and if the computer was made in the last 8 or 9 years then that option should be available. On my newest laptop, you have to press the C when the BIOS posts in order to boot off a CD, but it can be done. Then you can let Windows do the formatting.

winston · Post by **winston** » 16 Apr 2005 7:33 pm

Finally got the thing to boot from the floppy disk. Formatted, installed win98SE, went to IBM site to download drivers. Everything is fine now. thanks to all. winston may