Before discussing the removal of Windows 2000 it is important to understand a little of how the system operates. When you format a hard drive, you have the option of creating one partition equal to the size of the drive, or splitting the disk into two or more smaller partitions. Once you have done this you must then choose one of these partitions to be active. Windows recognises only one partition at a time as active, irrespective of how many disks or partitions you have. You can see which partition is set active by using the fdisk programme available on the Win 9X boot disk. This active partition will be the C:\ drive in your system. When you install an Operating System, the files needed to boot that system will always be placed on this active partition, even if the Operating System itself is installed in a different partition. Where you have only one Operating System installed, both the boot files, and the Operating System itself will usually be on the C:\ drive. However if you are using more than one Operating System, you may have installations in D:\ and E:\ drives for example, but the boot files for both these installations would still be placed on the C:\ drive. Once you understand this, and of course know which boot files each Operating System uses, then the process of removing an Operating System becomes simpler.

REMOVE 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 recognises 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.

REMOVE WINDOWS 2000 FROM A DUAL BOOT WITH WINDOWS 9X

The method of removing Windows 2000 from a dual boot system is basically the same as above with one additional complication - the Windows 2000 Boot Loader. The Boot Loader is basically the programme that creates the menu you see when booting, asking which Operating System you wish to use. The Boot Loader menu, together with the length of time time that the menu is displayed come from the information contained in the boot.ini file. In order to remove Windows 2000 therefore, it is also necessary to remove this Boot Loader programme: this is done by using the SYS command from the Windows 9X Boot Disk to transfer control of the boot process to Windows 9X e.g. "SYS C:". This can also be done whilst using Windows 9X, from a Command Prompt. Once the Boot Loader is removed you can then remove the Windows 2000 files as above.

REMOVE WINDOWS 9X FROM A DUAL BOOT WITH WINDOWS 2000

This one is a bit simpler, and can be done whilst working in Windows 2000. Remove the Read Only property from the boot.ini file and then open the boot.ini file using notepad. Delete the lines that refer to Windows 9X, ensuring first that the Default= line refers to your Windows 2000 installation, not Windows 9X!! If you are not comfortable deleting the reference to Windows 9X, you can simply disable it in the boot.ini file by adding the line [any text] above the information you wish to disable, e.g.

[Boot Loader]

timeout=3

Default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT

[Operating Systems]

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect /nodebug

[any text]

C:\="Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition"

You may then wish to set timeout=0 so that the Boot Loader does not display: this will boot the system directly into Windows 2000. Then delete the WINDOWS and PROGRAM FILES folders from the Windows 9X partition, and delete the boot files: io.sys, msdos.sys, command.com and if necessary autoexec.bat and config.sys.