Reinstall W2K and format hard drive

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

> I have a Dell Latitude C600 laptop, with a pre-installed W2K on a
> single partition hard drive (C: drive). The laptop came from Dell
> with only a reinstall W2K CD.
>
> Lately, when I installed DSL, the laptop became really unstable, at
> one time W2K cannot even boot. Now I want to reformat the hard drive
> and reinstall W2K from scratch.
>
> I went through several times reinstallation. During installation,
> there is one step asking for choosing from 3 selections: (1) install
> on the an unused partition. (2) install in the current installtion
> location (WINNT) (3) format the hard drive (by pressing key D)
>
> I want to choose selection (3) above to format the hard drive. But
> when I push key D, nothing happen. The only selection that works is
> (2), install in the current location (WINNT)
>
> My question is: how to format the hard drive and do a clean W2K
> installtion with only a reinstall CD?

Does your Latitude have a floppy drive? If it does, get Drive Fitness Test
here:

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm

Make its boot floppy and use the Erase Bootsector option.

Once you're back up and running, get a DSL router so you don't have to
install any DSL software on your computer.

-Mike