Can u format proprietary hdd?

Ron_Jeremy

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Hey peeps. Has anyone ever low level formatted a Compaq hdd? I have a friend who is the (unfortunate) owner of a Compaq Presario 5000 PC. He no longer wants Win ME as his OS & wants to switch to Win2K or NT4. I have never really worked on a proprietary system before, but this Compaq piece of junk has some sort of restore or backup partition (can't remember what the heck it was called exactly) that I guess is used to retore the PC to its original state along with the Compaq Retore CD (correct me if I'm wrong).
Anyway, does anyone forsee any problems if I just low level format this drive & start fresh?
Also, is the hdd actually made by Compaq? I mean, I have low level format utilities for 4 or 5 of the major hdd manufacturers, but what would I use to completely wipe this hdd clean?
Any help is muchly appreciated!

Cheers,

Ron_Jeremy

If you loan a friend $20 & never see them again, it was worth it.
 

Spdy_Gonzales

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It would be easier to just turn off the PC Health function:
settings/control panel/scheduled tasks/PCHealth Scheduler/
click on schedule and then advanced...then click the end date and enter todays date. The function will terminate at the end of the day.

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Spdy_Gonzales

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As far as the hard disk goes, you don't need any low level reformat to change the operating system. All you need to do is boot with a start up floppy and and use the regular format command. But I recommend giving WinME a try before changing the operating system.

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Ron_Jeremy

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what does this "pc health monitor" thingy do exactly, & what does this have to do with removing Win ME from this machine???????

Cheers,

Ron_Jeremy

If you loan a friend $20 & never see them again, it was worth it.
 

del_35

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I have low level formatted a few drives in the past and have never encountered any problems thus far. If the drive is big u may have to wait a long time for it to finish.

"Remember that after great thought, things are always bought from the lowest bider"
 

Spdy_Gonzales

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I assumed that the reason your friend wanted to change the operating system was because he thought WinME was too slow. The pc health monitor is creating backup restore points which you can use if you ever have problems starting up your computer. The problem is that it is always running in the background and really makes the computer slow. So, I thought that if you turned off the pc health monitor you would see that WinME is a decent operating system and that you really don't need to change to another operating system.

But, if you have decided to change the operating system anyway, then all you have to do is reformat using the standard boot up floppy disk. I don't believe a low level reformat is necessary if you only want to change the operating system. If the HDD was not working properly, then that would be another issue and a low level format might be appropriate...but that does not seem to be the case here.

To sum up: turn off the pc health monitor to see if the performance of WinME improves to the point that you now like it.

If you have already purchased W2K and your questions relate to the installation of that operating system then you should post them in the W2K forum. Also, it might be wise to read the postings in that forum to see whether W2K is really what you want.



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