Hello I just purchased a government computer that has been scrubbed clean for security reasons. The only thing in it is DOS. I have a Windows 2000 professional CD. How do I install it? Is it as simple as just sticking the disc in or is there any preliminary work I have to do? I don't know much about computers and don't want to screw it up. I don't think I can get back to square one if I mess up.

This could be a long journey for you if you're not familiar with puters. First you need the win 2k or win 98 boot disk. You can get this from someone who has a computer already. Put the disk in the floppy drive and put the cd in the cd player. Bott up the machine. When asked,load with cd rom support. At the A:/prompt type setup. If it doesn't work type E:/setup. The os should install now. When it's finished your journey begins to install the drivers for your hardware i.e. modem / soundcard etc. You can find out what's in the machine by going to settings / control panel / device manager. It will list your hardware there. Once you get an internet connection, you can download the drivers from there. Good Luck, and get some whiskey.

If your going to install Windows 2000 from Dos..........be sure and copy a copy of smartdrv.exe from the command folder from a Windows 98 CD. Copy smartdrv.exe to your Windows 9x boot floppy and load it after you get the a:\prompt then install Windows 2000. If you dont load smartdrv.exe it will take hours and hours to install W2k.

Undo Just to be clear on your instructions...do I just copy the file to the boot disk and then to the hard drive before installing W2K OS or do I just copy it to the boot disk? If I am to copy it to the hard drive do I just type copy smartdrv.exe c: or do I make a windows dir and type copy smartdrv.exe c:\windows?? (I'm assuming I'll get an A:\ prompt at start up?) It's been ages since I played with DOS commands Thanks in advance Judy

Presumably this drive is not configured, having been wiped by the government chappies??? Regardless… Simplest approach? If the PC allows a CD boot you can install via that route. Go into the bios settting and set the system to boot from a CD; save the change and reboot with CD in CDROM. (The system does have one…?) Follow usual on–screen prompts for installing W2K. During setup you can i.e. should (re)create the partition, format the drive etc. Another approach – especially if no CD boot allowed: Boot up with a DOS/’9x boot-disk with CDROM support; access the W2K makeboot util in the CD and make a set of (4) W2K setup/boot-floppies. Use these to run setup and thus avoid the need to reset boot-sequence to boot from CD as outlined initially above? Again setup allows you to (re)configure drive etc. If feeling a little more adventurous… Use a ’98 bootdisk (ideally with CDROM support) and reconfigure the drive as fat32; even better to have both Primary and Extended partitions. Primary for OS/apps/utils, Extended for data only. You naturally use Fdisk/format utils. Tutorial/guide-lines on this reconfig. at: http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q255/8/67.ASP Then run W2K setup as above either CD boot or the floppies approach. During install you can opt to go for ntfs if preferred; but I’d stay with fat32 unless ‘security’ is really an issue…? No ’98 boot-disk? Go to: http://www.bootdisk.com and then the w0rm link. (It’s an OK/safe source.) Download the ’98 boot-disk image there; usually saving it to a hard-drive. This self expands to a floppy and this is the ’98 bootdisk. Get the version with full CDROM support. You can also obtain W2K setup floppies there if need-be. And from the M$ KB – how to install W2K: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q304868 The issue you may need to address initially is whether or not the system will fully support W2K. There is util in the CD (chkupgrd.exe) that runs a check on the system. It generates a report on what is/isn’t OK for W2K. You could run this off the CD via DOS/’98 bootdisk (with CDROM support). Possibley you may need to update bios, motherboard drivers, VGA etc? If this system has already had W2K installed then there’s probably no need to run the check; but ensure you do have all necessary before your start the W2K installation. If the drive has only DOS installed then the max partition size will be 2Gig, and presumably the balance of the drive is an Extended partition - probably unconfigured/unformatted? W2K really likes 3Gig or more for the OS/apps/utils...

I have a feeling your ex-government computer does not support boot to CD....so the Windows 98 boot disk is the best way. Yes copy smartdrv.exe to the boot disk. Boot with cdrom support then after you have booted you will see the A:\prompt. With smartdrv.exe on the boot floppy just load it by typing smartdrv.exe. Then go to the drive letter assigned to your cdrom drive and go to the i386 folder and type winnt.exe. This will start the install process. If your cdrom drive is e: type e:enter then type cd i386 and enter then type winnt.exe and away you go. Stay with fat32 and partition your harddrive as you wish. You could create the setup disks like the post above mentioned........but you can do the same thing installing from DOS. At some point you will want to create those 4 boot disks in case you need to repair something etc. If you need any bootdisks........go to bootdisk.com and download them. My copy of Windows 2000 which is one of the early releases will not install over or from a Windows ME bootdisk. So I have to install from a Windows 98. Good Luck