Thread: HOW TO: Manually Remove Windows 2000 and Restore Windows 95 or Windows 98

SUMMARY

This explains how to remove a Windows 2000 upgrade and restore Microsoft Windows 95 or Microsoft Windows 98.
Identify Which File System being Used

1.

a. Open My Computer from desktop.
b. Right-click the disk you want, and click Properties.
c. Look for the File System entry.

2. Check how much disk space is vacant. Check your Windows 95 or Windows 98 records to decide the amount of disk space that you need.

3. find a Windows Startup disk that have CD-ROM drivers so that you can gain access to the PC's CD-ROM drive.

4. Start your PC by using the Windows 98 or Windows 95 Startup disk. Check that you can read the CD-ROM drive, and then run the sys c: command from the command prompt.

Renaming Folders

If Windows 95 or Windows 98 installed on the same drive on which Windows 2000 is installed, you should rename the folders to avoid clash between Windows 95 or 98.

Removing NTFS Drives

For removing NTFS file system,format the hard disk to utilize the FAT or FAT32 file system.This can be done by using the Recovery Console tool on the Windows 2000 CD-ROM. Reformatting or repartitioning a disk deletes all the data on it, so ensure you back up your data.

To use Recovery Console to reformat a drive, follow these steps:

1. Start the PC by using the Windows 2000 CD-ROM or the Startup disks.

2. When the "Welcome to Setup" screen is showed, press F10.

3. In Recovery Console, select the proper installation and log on by using
Administrator password.

4. Type map, and press ENTER.

5. Note the drive you want to reformat.

6. Type format x: /fs:fat32, where x is the letter of the drive you would like to format and FAT32 is the file system you want to use.

7. Type y to confirm your selection. When the formatting procedure is ended, type exit to restart PC.

Freeing Up Disk Space

If there is not enough space on disk, you can delete following files and folders:

• Clear all Windows 2000 Recycle Bins.
• In Internet Explorer, delete all temporary internet files and clear history files.
• Delete the Pagefile.sys and the Hiberfil.sys files.

The files shown below are hidden files that are situated in the root folder of the drive that is used to start the PC. Usually, this is drive C, which is the first drive letter that is existing for hard disks. To remove the Windows 2000 system files, follow these steps:

1. Start Windows Explorer.

2. On View menu, click Folder Options.

3. On View tab, click Show all files, and click OK.

4. In the root folder of drive C or the boot drive, delete the following files:

* Boot.ini
* Ntbootdd.sys
* Ntdetect.com
* NTLDR

5. On the drive on which Windows 2000 is installed, delete following files if they present:

* Hiberfil.sys
* Pagefile.sys

6. Delete the following folders if they present:

* Windows
* Program Files
* Documents and Settings

Running Windows 98 or Windows 95 Setup

To run Windows Setup, Start your PC by using the Windows 98 Startup disk or a bootable disk that have CD-ROM drivers. After you get access to the CD-ROM drive, type following lines, press ENTER after each line
sys c:
x:\setup.exe

where x is the drive letter of your CD-ROM drive. There must be a Setup.txt file on Windows 95 or Windows 98 CD-ROM that describes how to run Setup. There are extra instructions for Setup in the Getting Started guide that is included with Windows 95 or Windows 98.