How can I delete Windows NT and upgrade to Windows ME

[seday]

I recently purchased a laptop used in the Military that has NT on it and I want to delete it and it and upgrade to Windows 98/ME or XP?

[GretaP]

You could d/load the Delpart utility , place it on a bootable floppy and use it to delete the NT partition.
If I'm not mistaken, you could also use a WIN98 startup disk and delete the NT partition by using the FDISK utility on the startup disk, opting to delete the NON-DOS partition.

Once you have deleted the NT partition, you would then use the WIN98 startup disk to create a Primary DOS partition and make it active, format the partition, and then install 98/ME.

If you are installing XP and have the retail install CD, once you have deleted the NT partition, you can create and format a partition for XP from within XP's Setup.

[PostCode]

Your going to have to remove the NTFS partition on the drive first. Grab a bootdisk from Bootdisk.com. Get a bootdisk for the operating system that you plan to install if you do not have one. The program that you download is used to make a bootdisk. It's not the bootdisk itself. Insert a floppy into your drive and run the program. It'll create one for you.

Boot the laptop to the floppy and run fdisk. Follow the instructions in the following tutorials for deleting and creating partitions:

How to Delete a Partition (fdisk)

How to Create a Partition (fdisk)

Once you get the partition setup, reboot with the floppy in the drive and format the partition you just created.

How to Format a Partition

Once you format the drive you start the process of installing Windows onto the hard drive.

How to install Windows

If you have any questions at all about doing anything here, just fire away. We'll be more than happy to give any help.

Hope this helps.

[PostCode]

To fast for me Greta.

[VONetwork]

First check if it has NTFS partitions or FAT16. If FAT no problem at all installing either OS, you can delete and create partitions by one of the methods suggested above, e.g using DOS startup disk. Or alternatively you can just reformat and install either of OSes you want provided you are happy with current partition sizes.
If it is NTFS no problem installing WinXP 'cause it recognizes NTFS and let you use it as is or recreate as you wish during installation process.
If it is NTFS and you are going to install Win9x( i.e. Win98/ME) problemes arise 'cause it doesn't support NTFS; so you have to delete it. To do that you can,
1. Install a disk utility software like Patition magic on NT and convert it back to FAT( and also can recreate partions with it.)
2. The method suggested by most - use DOS FDISK to delete non-dos partition but this is something that doesn't work 100% of time. Many times it has failaed for me for one or other reason.
3. You can just start installing an OS like NT/200/XP which recognises NTFS and let it delete it and just shut down the computer and restart the computer with DOS startup disk and make patitions from scratch. (This is the method used by me in such cases)

thanks
Nirosh