does Anyone know how to go to the command prompt before windows 2000 starts loading??

to better formulate my question .how do i go to ms dos when i turn on the laptop before it loads windows

Unfortunately Windows 2000, like NT4 and XP and W2K3 has no MS DOS except under the Virtual Device Manager VDM, it is in fact NT COMMAND PROMPT the following NT4 article in essence applies to all later NT based O/S: http://www.windowsitlibrary.com/Content/226/03/toc.html When you hit F8 before Windows launches, you do get a choices menu one of which is COMMAND PROMPT. If you wish to repair an installation then using the REPAIR function available as an option when booting from the O/S CD will also offer NT COMMAND PROMPT line commands. DO NOT BAN THE MESSENGER

It can be done if the computer was loaded with 2 systems one being the dos based one and the other win2k.The NT family of systems like NT4,Win2k and XP have no standalone dos to offer.You cannot boot to dos with Win2k only unless you make use of the dual boot feature and load a dos based system(like dos 6.22 or Win9X) on C drive and then load Win2k on D drive for example.On startup you would then be offered the choice of one or the other by the boot loader program.Reconfiguring the laptop for this is risky,more risky than with a desktop computer.You could well run into problems specific to laptops.Make sure you review the problem completely before attempting this type of upgrade on a laptop and understand how this type of computer behaves when loading systems.Some laptops have no diskette drive or need some specific drivers for the cdrom drive.Good luck.

heres what happened :while updating to sp4, the laptop froze .i restarted it and now it doenst want to load windows 2000 .ive tried all the f8 commands none of them can load winodws.i only have a usb cd drive and prior to freeze while attemtipng to install some drivers with floppies i would get "The disk in drive A is not formatted" and it wouldnt even format it.so i cnat even boot up the laptop with a bootdisk ...any ideas??

Remove the laptop drive and install in a standard PC by means of an IDE Adaptor Cable http://www.cablesonline.net/940pinto44pi.html SYS the hard drive from a MS DOS boot floppy as well as copying over the contents of the W2K CD to a folder on the hard drive. In your other posts there are links which explain about installing W2K from MS DOS. DO NOT BAN THE MESSENGER

In most cases I have seen repairing Windows 2000 or XP is tricky(not to say impossible without a restore point).Their stability is supposed to prevent reinstalling the system.When you crash you generally end up reinstalling.Check in the bios if you can boot from the USB drive to boot from cdrom or diskette drive and reinstall Windows.You can try making the boot diskettes specific to win2k.Use another Windows based computer.Open the Boot Disk folder at the root of the win2k cdrom and run makebt32.Follow on screen instructions and be ready to supply the 4 already formatted diskettes to create a boot disks set.Good luck.