windows 2000 Uninstall

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Can someone please tell me how I could unistall Windows 2000 and install Windows 98. I had win95 when I went and blindly put in WIN2000.. i am having severe problems.. Thanks

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First things first. Do you have FAT32 or NTFS type hard drives?

If you have NTFS, the ONLY way I have heard of is to do a FDISK and a Format and then a clean install of Windows 98.

DaveA I am so far behind, I think I am First
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

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it’s the only way anyway. you can’t downgrade.

if using FAT32, you could delete the winnt folder from dos (use a boot disk) and avoid reformat but you can’t avoid reinstalling al lyour apps.

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I would tend to advise you to look at the problem another way. Why are you having ‘severe’ problems with Win2k? Also, though this is unlikely to be of much help to you personally, if your HD is big enough, have a dual boot system (Win98SE/Win2k) and retain FAT32 for the latter. I know this means some of the advanced features of 2k are missing (eg encryption) but you have total intercommunication. If an app works on both, you only need the one copy. You need to weigh up the pros and cons. Before installing Windows 2000, visit the MS site and find out if your set-up is going to be compatible.
By far the biggest problem is drivers. ie. not your fault at all. In case of any glitch, always go to the manufacturers’ websites and get the 2k versions – applies to both h’ware and s’ware.
Why go to all this trouble? It’s because Windows 2000 is by far the best and most stable of all the MS operating systems currently available for the home user. If you stick with it and come through the crisis, I don’t think you’ll regret it. I’m sure there’s enough experience in here to have come across the same problems as yourself. Give them a try. (I’d say ‘us’ but I haven’t really been around long enough to qualify…)

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it may be the best, but for most home users, overkill. logons, security, services etc are too much bother for users who just want the %$#& thing to work.

not all games and hardware work well with win2k and if using an older machine, it’s probably at the low end of the requirements for the OS and is sluggish or missing drivers.

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…which is just what Windows ME doesn’t do very well. I would agree 98SE is not that bad, but in spite of your reservations, imo 2k is definitely an advance. I use an ancient Pentium 11 system, and never have to log on – it’s all automatic. It may not be the fastest around, but it handles Quake 2 and Half-Life fine with a well-below cutting-edge graphics card. Since I installed it as the latter half of a dual-boot system it has never crashed of its own accord. Zone Alarm etc. and the updates from MS seem to take care of the security issue, or am I living in a fool’s paradise? I take the point (in fact I made it in my last post) not all software has a 2k version and not all hardware is compatible. I may have been lucky – all my serious apps still work, or have been upgraded. The only ISA card I have is a modem, which has behaved itself perfectly. All the thorny issues I’d been wrestling with in 98SE have gone – the IRQs (or #INTs) sorted themselves out. My only real gripe is that my Ricoh Combo won’t play DvDs perfectly under Win 2000, and it does under 98SE.
Windows XP is not going to be much of an improvement, either. The OS seems to me to have been done for MS’ convenience. I had an opportunity to try it out in beta (one of my daughter’s friends works for a MS Platinum Partner) but talking it over with him, I decided not to. They too have been evaluating it, and I thought I’d reported correctly what he’d said, though it seems the locking in may not be as tight as I’d been led to believe. His company will not be converting.
In summary, Windows 2000 may have its faults, may not be the ideal OS for everybody and may yet improve, but it sure beats the alternatives. Probably.

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i’m not sure i follow how ME fits into a discussion about whether to go back to win98 or learn how to use win2k.

i never said 2k wasn’t an advance – it’s just not for every one. not everyone wants to mess with it, they just want to use the computer.

XP is months away from release – and only at pre-beta 2 currently. using an early beta as an evaulation is hardly fair, especially if you plan to discourage others from using it when it is released. Granted, beta1 was gross, but the most recent version is much improved. Besides, repeating others opinions without trying it yourself hardly seems right.

XP, like ME, is really going to be best on new hardware. Installing it as an upgrade on older hardware doesn’t take full advantage of the power the OS carries. It’s along the same lines as installing win3.1 or 95 on a new top of the line machine that has all the latest bells and whistles. The OS doesn’t support the new hardware and you’ve wasted your money on features you can’t use. In the case of XP and ME, you got the latest OS that supports bells and whistles your machine doesn’t have. So why buy it?

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…because most of the problems I’ve seen concerning ME (and there are many) are from people who have taken the 98/ME route and bypassed 2k. I should like to discourage this, if only because I know from experience ME is machine-independently bugged to the gills. Win 2k isn’t.
Sorry, I did not make clear that not all my comments about Whistler were from direct experience. My fears had sufficient grounds for me to decline the offer of beta testing. They are, however, gleaned from numerous sources, and there seems to be a consensus that in its final form XP is for the corporate comfort of MS, and not user convenience. OTWT.
If, as you aver, the latest MS OSs are meant for new hardware, I’m quite surprised that this is the first time I’ve heard that expressly stated. Alright for OEM set-ups on new machines, but not for upgrading, then? I thought decent s’ware was supposed to be backwards compatible.
Bells and whistles aren’t much good if, through no fault of your own, they don’t ring. Neither is it like installing those very old OSs on a latest machine. There’s nobody telling you that’s a good idea: there’s plenty pushing ME. I would not expect ISA cards to work perfectly with current Windows manifestations, though many do.
When XP is finally released, if enough of the people I trust tell me it’s better that 2k, I’ll buy it. Until then, as on other issues, we’ll have to agree to differ.
Rgds

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XP is a natural evolution of an existing platform. The code base for Windows 9x/ME has its underpinnings in DOS, and stretches beack into the 1980s. Mircrosoft for years has been trying to better it and move people away from DOS because of its inherent instability.

With regards to the hardware required, as PC technology advances, users should expect that the newer operating systems – as with all software – will be developed with the newer hhardware, and intended to run on it. Most of the time people who grouse about how bloated Office or Windows has become are trying to pack 40 punds of [censored] into a five pound bag.

Microsoft would like for you to use their new software. Backwards compatibility is always a goal – it’s called the ‘installed base’ – and it means that the newer software will read older document formats and the like. It does not mean that it is intended to be run on older systems.

Microsoft and other vendors will not tell you directly that their offerings are meant for newer hardware. They expect that you will read the specifications before you go out an try. And the specs are bound to be as low as possibile – bare minimums, more exactly, meaning that you can run it on that class hardware. It says nothing of the results you will get.

When XP is released, it will be the first time that there is a consumer release based on the NT code base as 2000 currently is. XP is essentially a point upgrade to the WIndows 2000 platform.

Always, always, always, when considering 2000, one must keep in mind that although it looks the same as Millenium in a number of ways, it is an entirely different operating system. Imagine if you were to open the hood of your car and find a nuclear reactor instead of the trusty motor that every other car has. Might look like the same old car, but its principles are entirely different. The NT/2000 code base is targeted more at business and development tasks than 9x/ME, and it’s impressive in its ability to run so many programs. But it is *not* the same as 9x/ME and has different design goals.

Oh yes – lest I forget – Windows 2000 has its own fair share of bugs. The service pack that has been released and the upcoming SP2 release attest to that fact. And you can break it just as badly as you can other Windows versions if you beat on it. Just not as easily.

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Hi MerC,

Thanks a million for your reply. I thank the others for their resp. Replies too. Something funny happened when i went to your site. I saw the picture of Freddie merc there and told myself.. Handsome devil. Did not see the dates. Then I said to myself. Gosh this guy looks like Freddy MErc. Never did put ur site name to Freddy’s name. Talk of dumb heads. Then hubby pops up and I show him your wonderful site and he says “hey that is Freddy merc, and he is dead”. That was when it struck home.

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I shall send people in my field and otherwise to your site and thanks a million.. usha

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I’m going to print out your post and frame it….
Seriously, glad you like the place. It exists solely to help users who need Windows to be a little more secure and friendly.
Ciao

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