Tutorial on NT "How to erase NT4 from a extended partition."
written by jabea, copyright 2000
first created on the 9 august 2000
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1. Legal Stuff
If you destroy your computer, or lost any data cause of my tutorial, Im not in any way responsible for that. |
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2. How to use that tutorial
That tutorial is mainly written in the way, like me, if you have to erase / remove NT from your computer. In general, it's not a hard task, but you will need a small knowledge of how the partition scheme work before following that tutorial.
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3. What you need to follow that tutorial
First of all, that tutorial is written, if like me, you have TWO MS operatings systems on your computer (in ex. you have Windows 95 and NT4 installed).
That mean you have two hard drive, or a hard drive divided into partitions.
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4. Let's start
First, to be a bit theorical, NT need TWO partition to install, one in FAT16, and one another.
The first in FAT16 is where NT put all of his boot files, ntdetect.exe, etc.. and is the place where his boot loader is located. On my computer, my Win95 is located on that drive, due to the fact NT only put some executable files there and that NT CAN'T load from a NTFS partition.
Another of your drive is where NT put all of his operating systems (the system partition) (in ex. where \win32\ is)
Ok, during the install, you can put your system partition in NTFS or not, if not, then you can skip all the FDISK step.
If you can see your drive with \win32\ while in Win95, then only make "format X:\" where X is the place your winnt is (note: where \win32\ is) and then you can skip the 4.1 step
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4.1. Using FDISK to be able to Format your drive (ONLY if your system partition is in NTFS)
Ok, let's start by running fdisk, go in you start menu->run, and type "fdisk"
Now if you have Win95 "B" and upper, it ask you if you want to handle big partitions, answer YES.
Now, you should see a msdos menu, put it full screen if you need it to read the menu. Now , we will try to locate your NTFS partition..
To find it, go in the menu "4" , something like "Display partition information", check to see a " NTFS" title in the "TYPE", if you have a extended partition, it will ask you if you want to show them, awsner "YES" if you already didnt find the NTFS 's one.
If you find nothing there, then press "ESC" to return back to the main menu, and then select "5", something like "Change the current drive" and select your other hard drive to see specific information about it and return in the menu "4" to check for the partition, repeat as many hard drive you have or until you find the partition.
When you have find it, it's time to delete it, press "ESC" one time, and then go in the menu "3", to delete it.
You should see a option "delete a non msdos partition", "4" on my machine, select it. Then select your partition number.
Now, you need to remake the partition you erased to be able to use the space free. Go in the menu "1" called like "Create a partition", and then select to create one, and follow the step.
Now after some fdisk message, we have our partition free, time to REBOOT your machine and to format it right after finishing booting Win95 (in ex., my partition was on f:, now i need to make "format f:" after i rebooted)
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5. The last step.
Now, everything is fine, no more Windows NT, but only a small thing is left behing, and can still bug your machine, it's the "os loader" from nt,
to remove it, type:
sys X: , where X: is the drive where your win95 boot(in most case it's where your config.sys and autoexec.bat file here located)
You can remove boot.ini, bootsect.dos, ntdetect.exe, ntldr (if you have a scsi hard drive, another file is supposed to be there)
Now your systems is WinNT free!!
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6. Last note
Now it's time to install Linux on that free drive!! :P
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