I'm wanting to do a full system restore of my wife's computer which has Windows 2000 Professional but when I run the first system restore disk, it says I must first delete non-dos partitions. I don't really understand what this means and how to do it and I have no other start-up disks. Can someone guide a not very technical guy?

As far as I know, windows 2000 does not have a system restore. Do you mean that you want to do a clean re- install of windows 2000?

Sorry, I used the wrong term. I meant yes a clean re-install of Windows 2000 using the system recovery CDs.

Remember, when you do a re-install, you will loose all existing data on the computer. You want to back up first important stuff you do not want to loose.

See this handy how to:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/304868

Follow those steps, and let us know how it went.

Thanks for the information but the link you provided did not relate to using the system recovery disks and that is where I'm currently stuck since the message "delete non-dos partitions" comes up and I don't know how to do it. I just have the system recovery disks, no Windows 2000 Professional disk and not boot or start up disks. the system recovery disks should work and restore the computer to its factory state once I know how to delete these non-dos partitions.

It seems that Microsoft does not support this anymore. But I found some sort of hope here.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/106419

I myself am not sure how all of that work, as I never used 2000 myself, but see if above link and debug script makes sense to you, and let us know.

Depending on the computer's manufacturer, the computer may have a "hidden" partition that may be necessary for a system restore to occur.

If fdisk doesn't tell you what the partition is, you could try booting off of a Linux install disk and accessing its partition management tool. You should at least be able to identify the hidden partition from there, if not delete it outright.

Bill

what it boils do to is ,the recovery should not be asking you to delete non -dos partitons ,unless some made changes to the partitions since the last time iwin2000 was installed .like deleting the partition that most recoveries use to perform a recovery

Would there be any problem in me trying to use system recovery disks from my own computer, a different make and with XP Home on. Could that work on a different make of computer? I would be quite happy to have XP Home installed on my wife's computer instead of 2000 professional.

nope ,not a chance ,you need to go buy xp home for it