Help to Format PC

[charlesworth82]

Hi all,

Hope someone can help me on this. Our company is giving away a lot of old machines.

They have only been used for running data on (dont know what exactly) so they havent bothered with wiping them. My problem is that I can not log in to the pc to format it (it is windows XP). Can i format the computer anyway without loggin in - or are these machines worthless to me? I have a licence to XP (old computer is dead).

Any help would be appreciated.

[tayspen]

You need to boot into the windows CD, but in order to do that you first need to configure you BIOS* to boot from a CD. When thats done, just put your CD in the tray, and it should boot into it by itself (although sometimes it may say "Press any key to boot from CD..." then you would have to press a key.) Once it's booted up, just follow the on screen instructions, or look here: http://www.windowsnetworking.com/j_helmig/wxpinstl.htm

*Your BIOS may have a password on it to, if so you may have to ask the people who gave it to you what it is.

If you get stuck let me know :).

[charlesworth82]

Hi - thanks for the quick response- Was hoping it would be as easy as that - will give it a go tonight and let you know how it goes.

Thanks in advance.

James

[BILL S]

I inherited a Touch Systems PC with Win98 running on it and a slot 1 CPU, I hope to upgrade that to a 370 socket/Slot 1 adapter so I can ramp up the power... the local shop has slot one P3s as well, at good prices. Problem is, I also have a system where the Admin, whoever they were, used the password system to log on as well... Fate was kind here, as they left Guest open for other users. I doubt a password can be obtained. If I want to leave the OS intact, what are my options with Win98? I do have a 98 SE disk now, but not the same as the OS installed
BILL

[sosco]

Hi BILL
Let me understand... you have a win 98? and you did not know the WIN98 LogOn password? Oke then.. as i remeber well.. make a search on the boot partition after a file with extension: *.pwd. Delete that file.. you will did not know the password but the system will not have it anymore!

[sosco]

charlesworth82
About formating the pc... everything what tayspen told you is write.. but you can try another posibility.. it is just a thought! i'm not shure that it will work: go in boot.ini and delete everything and add this line: format c: /u/s and restart the computer... pls tell me it will work!

[BILL S]

Hi
Lately my research has shown the mobo in the Touch sys. PC is a Gigabyte model GA-6BXC, and at rev 1.7, it is unable to support higher coppermine FC PGA CPUs that would go to 755 or so... My 800 MHz slot 1 P3 would not work...so where can I use these high end slot 1 processors I wonder? I did get what is called a SlotKET, it allows 370 chips to mate on a slot 1 card, so I was able to retain settings on the above board and use a 500MHz Celeron on the adapter, jumping the speed up from 400, the top P2 speed I think.
Anyway, the password page has stopped coming up and is not an issue at present but thanks for the info though!!
BILL

[caperjack]

Hi
Lately my research has shown the mobo in the Touch sys. PC is a Gigabyte model GA-6BXC, and at rev 1.7, it is unable to support higher coppermine FC PGA CPUs that would go to 755 or so... My 800 MHz slot 1 P3 would not work...so where can I use these high end slot 1 processors I wonder? I did get what is called a SlotKET, it allows 370 chips to mate on a slot 1 card, so I was able to retain settings on the above board and use a 500MHz Celeron on the adapter, jumping the speed up from 400, the top P2 speed I think.
Anyway, the password page has stopped coming up and is not an issue at present but thanks for the info though!!
BILL

you may be able to get a 700 or 800 plll socket 370 to work in the slocket ,i have had success a few time doing this .100\133 bus speed jumpers on the slocket make it possiable with some boards