Removing a single Windows 2000 Installation:
The simple way to remove an installation is to boot from a Windows 9X Floppy Boot Disk, and do a quick format on the partition where the Operating System is installed e.g. FORMAT C: /Q. This will obviously delete all files on the partition however, so make sure that you have backed up any necessary files beforehand. The Windows 9x Boot Disk only recognizes FAT and FAT32 partitions however, so if you have installed Windows 2000 on a NTFS partition, you will need to use fdisk to delete the partition. Under fdisk NTFS will show as an unknown partition, but it can still be deleted.
If you do not wish to format the partition you can remove an installation on a FAT/FAT32 partition, by booting from a Windows 9X Floppy Boot Disk, and manually deleting the boot files, on the C:\ partition. The files that Windows 2000 uses are boot.ini, bootsect.dos, ntldr, ntdetect.com and ntbootdd.sys (Note: Not all these files may be present). These are hidden files however, so you may need to use the ATTRIB programme on the boot disk to make them visible e.g. "ATTRIB -H -R -S C:\*.*". You can then use the DELTREE function to delete the WINNT directory and the PROGRAM FILES directory. Before you use your Boot Disk make sure that the FORMAT, FDISK, ATTRIB,SYS and DELTREE programmes are on the floppy disk. Two other system files that you may wish to remove are the paging file, pagefile.sys, and the hibernation file, hiberfil.sys.
The information in this article applies to:
Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
Microsoft Windows XP Professional
Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional
