Master and slave

[chelsea25]

I have a computer which currently has windows xp pro on a 3g drive, which is the slave,

The E drive (9g)(master) has been formatted as it did have windows xp home on it, but the activation time ran out on it, but now has nothing,

so can anyone tell me how i can stop it from booting up from the slave C drive, as i want to install windows 2000 on to the E (master) as it has more room on it, and then get rid of windows xp on the smaller drive.

Could someone run me though what i need to do to do this, as easily as possible as i am not very good with computers.

Many thanks, really hope someone can help me?

[rojash]

You need to change the bios setting to force the machine to boot from CD, then insert the W2000 installation CD and reboot.
How you get into the bios varies accoding to manufacturer, but if you watch as the machine boots, you should see a message like "Press Del to enter setup" - Del is the most common but some use F1, F2, or Shift and some other key.

Of course you could disconnect the slave drive, and reconnect it after installing W2000

[JackRegan]

Just a little note....you can't install Win2000 from booting from the CD.You need an operating system like Win98 or M.E installed first then you put in you Win2000 cd when you have booted into your operating system.Just thought i would let you know before you scrub off your XP install first.

[dodgyshirt]

W2000 CAN be installed by booting from the CD.

However no Windows OS allows an older version to be installed over the top of itself without first fomatting and re-setting the partition.

You would be best advised to do this to both drives before installing W2000

Follow rojash's advice how to do this and when you have finished alter the boot sequence back to boot from whichever drive you have installed the OS on.

[chelsea25]

Thanks for the answers. Every time i try to format the C drive it keeps telling me that i can't do it, anyone have any information on how i can do this?

And also, how i set the bios to force it to boot from the CD?

Thanks again :)

[dodgyshirt]

Enter the BIOS as rojash described and select 'Boot Sequence' and alter the first device to your CD-ROM and exit saving the change.

How are you attempting to format the C drive.

In the presumed absence of a W98 Boot disk containing fdisk, either use the XP install disk to do this or make a MS-DOS floppy disk by right-clicking the A drive in My Computer, select format and fill the tick-box to make the disk.

Boot your PC from this and at the prompt, type in Format C:

Having formatted alter the boot sequence to CD-ROM as described and W2000 should install.

Having done all that you are still left with a hard disk which is barely big enough to run Windows anyway.Why not spend �30 on a decent sized new HDD and save yourself all the hassle.

[Tim B]

Unless someone has been messing with your drives the master HDD is drive C and the slave D etc.

Your PC bios will not allow booting from drives other than A, C or CD.

You can install from CD (set the bios as advised). There will be an option to install/delete/repartion/format the master hdd (Drive C)drive.

If the disks have been 'messed with' get a non-Gates install disk (maybe Novell) and destroy the partitions which will leave the disk bare of partions and ready for total Gatesien installation. The Channel 1 (IDE) master disk should always be the boot disk.

Good luck.