format problems

[DomDom]

I have 5 IBM Netvista and I succeeded to format 4 of them. But the 5th one is giving me some problems. I can't do any format and I can't do anything with the partitions (delete, activate, ...). The computers were bought from second hand, but everything is perfectly legal (licences, ...).

When I try fdisk, if I choose "Display partition information", it says "Current fixed disk drive: 1". Then, I can't do anything else but reboot.

I want to install Win2k, but my cd is not bootable, so I execute the winnt.exe file in I386 directory, but before it begins to copy the files, it gives me the message that there is not enough space on the disk, and it aborts the installation.

I'm really lost here, can anyone help me please?

[Akim]

You can create Win2K boot disks (floppy).
Use "MAKEBT32.EXE" (if you run ir from Windows) or "MAKEBOOT.EXE" (for DOS). You'll find them in "BOOTDISK" folder of your Win2K CD.

[DomDom]

But those computers don't have floppy disk drives.

[Akim]

How do you boot them then? (Somehow you got to your CD to execute winnt.exe)
Or you boot from network?

[DomDom]

I copied the boot disk of Win98 on a cd.

[Akim]

Do you have any NT (4.0 or 2000) bootable CD?

[DomDom]

No! Just MSDN disks and none of them are bootable.

[Akim]

Try http://www.ibm.com/support

You might find there something that will help you to format.

[Akim]

Other then that, you might want to install a floppy drive.

[DomDom]

Ok, thank you anyway.

[Akim]

Good luck.