[137] in winnt
Re: A Fresh Hard Disk for NT
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Theodore Y. Ts'o)
Thu Apr 30 20:23:34 1998
Date: Thu, 30 Apr 1998 20:23:28 -0400
From: "Theodore Y. Ts'o" <tytso@MIT.EDU>
To: tjm@MIT.EDU, winnt@MIT.EDU
Cc: winnt@MIT.EDU, tjm@MIT.EDU, winnt@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: tjm@MIT.EDU's message of Thu, 30 Apr 1998 16:15:23 -0400,
<199804302015.QAA11224@salticus-peckhamae.MIT.EDU>
Date: Thu, 30 Apr 1998 16:15:23 -0400
From: tjm@MIT.EDU
Machine: Dell Optiplex GXL 5100
The above machine came preloaded a couple of years ago
with Windows 95, before we really supported NT. I also
needed 95 for some software that wouldn't run on 3.1.
Anyhow, I've now upgraded my system to NT4.0, but I'm
getting problems off and on, and I'd like to re-install
NT, and blow away all of the contents on my hard disk.
How do I do this? Format C:\ seems kinda harsh!
I had trouble figuring this out myself when I tried installing NT 4.0,
and I wanted it to completely wipe out the Windows 95 partition. I
suspect there is indeed a way to do this, but after spending 15 or 20
minutes and having no luck, I finally got fed up, booted Linux from a
floppy, and wiped out the partition on the hard disk:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=1k count=1
I was then able install NT4.0 and have it do a clean install on my
machine. (Which also happened to be one of the Dell Optiplex GXL's).
No, I'm not really suggesting that we tell users to do this, but it was
faster than my trying to figure out how to make the NT install program
do what I wanted. :-)
- Ted
