The Windows 2000 box finally lost it's mind this week, after getting progressively flakier over the past few months. Time do do a full reinstall...

Question - How do I delete everything on the HD before a reinstall (of Win2K)? (the system is only quasi-stable and IE6 & Outlook Explorer both generate faults when trying to open)

any advice is mucho appreciated.

First go download a Win98 bootdisk from here www.biazzi.org/docs/boot98se.exe

Disregard the fact that it's Win98 ... the utilities on the bootdisk are what you're interested in.  Have a blank floppy in your A: drive when you double click on the boot98se.exe file and it will create a bootable floppy disk for you.  Then simply restart your computer with the floppy in the drive.  This will boot you into a DOS prompt.

To format your HDD (this will delete everything) type format C:

You can then restart your computer without the floppy disk in, and enter the BIOS (usually it's either by pressing the Delete key or F2 ... it will tell you on-screen) to change the boot sequence so the CD-ROM is the primary boot device.

Now you can simply throw the Win2k CD in and exit the BIOS.  Windows installation will come up automatically at this point.

Boot to the windows 2k CD.

When it shows the partition information, delete your partition. then recreate one. Format new partition.

You now have a clean drive to continue installing on. However, the drive is not "sanitized". If you want all the data to be gone forever and unrecoverable, you'll need a wipe utility. Personally, unless you have sensitive info on the drive, i woudln't bother.

outstanding!

thank you sirs