On 06 Aug 2004 09:09:56 GMT, cblankii@aol.com (C BLANK II) wrote:

>My wife picked up a nice PC at work for peanuts today. It has Windows NT 4.0 on
>it. I would like to convert the hard drive to a DOS system to run my GEOS on,
>since it has a much larger hard drive on it than what I currently use. I cannot
>seem to find a way to get to a DOS prompt, however. How do I do that? Also, the
>last time I tried to wipe Windows 95 from a hard drive I had a heck of a time
>reformatting the drive and it never worked 100% thereafter. Any tips?

Create a DOS boot floppy on another machine. It should have at least
the following files on it:

system files incl. COMMAND.COM
FDISK
FORMAT
SYS
EDIT (or your preferred text editor)


Boot up the machine using the floppy. If it does not work, go into
setup and change the boot sequence.

Start FDISK and delete any partitions you can find, then create a
primary DOS partition and make it active.

On exiting FDISK, you may be asked to restart the pc.

Now type FORMAT C: /S

This is it. You should now have a clean DOS hard disk.

Depending on the size of the HD, especially if it is bigger than 2 or
8 GB, you may have to apply a few tweaks. It is best to use a version
7.X DOS, i.e. a "recovery disk" from a Windows 9X version.

In any case DOS will never report more than 2 GB free space, even if
there is much more.


Holger

Have you tried with the FreeDOS boot disk made by Hans ? I think it will
suite you well.

Get it from www.tvakatter.org

Andreas