TR Forums

Hi,
I have Windows M.E. on my pc and would like to know it it is possible to format only Windows M.E. without deleting any thing else on my HDD.then reinstall Windows M.E. without lossing any thing on the HDD?
If possible, how would it be done?

Thanks in advance,
dede

Is this spam? No one in the legitimate world of sane people would even consider doing such an asinine task!

Windows ME was a FAILED Microsoft attempt. I would imagine they would even BEG you to move on to XP/Vista/7.

thegleek wrote:

Is this spam? No one in the legitimate world of sane people would even consider doing such an asinine task!

Windows ME was a FAILED Microsoft attempt. I would imagine they would even BEG you to move on to XP/Vista/7.

Licensing is one thing that may force people to do it. Not everyone can afford new licenses out of the blue. May be you can help a fellow gerbil with a license donation?

It sounds like you're wanting a repair install, and I don't remember if ME supports that kind of reinstallation.

Back up everything on the hard drive first, then boot from your ME install CD and see if you can do a repair install; if not you'll need to install Windows over itself. This should not delete your data, but you may need to reinstall programs once you're done.

If this were my dog, I'd either get a cheap Win98SE license and use that, or a WinXP license, or switch to Linux instead.

edit: which Windows of those two I'd pick would come down to the computer's specs; if it couldn't support at least 512MB (and preferably more) RAM then it'd have to be 98. As to Linux, a common-ish distro that would work on ME-period hardware easily is Puppy Linux.

Flying Fox:
Thanks for the helpful information!

Again, thanks for for the witty answer you gave about a donation!

Dede

bthylafh:

An appreciative thank you for the excellent and constructive help! That is the kind of answer that proves these forums are
providing a very useful service!

Dede

I found the best solution was to burn an Ubuntu DVD/CD and boot from it, then procced to delete every windows folder and file, as the hidden secure folders that can't be deleted from Windows itself will show up in Linux and can be appropriately dealt with. This way you don't have to worry about overwriting the windows registry or play with folder permissions (Vista + Windows 7 only) in a later install. Essentially, it's the same was strating from scratch but with your files still intact - provided of course they're not in the 'program files' or 'my documents' folders.

Back in the Win9x days, I would reinstall windows over the top of its self, this more often than not worked fine.

srg86 wrote:

Back in the Win9x days, I would reinstall windows over the top of its self, this more often than not worked fine.

If I remember correctly, in the Win 9x days if you did that it would simply place the reinstalled Windows in a folder called WINDOWS.001 if it discovered an existing WINDOWS folder.

boing wrote:

srg86 wrote:

Back in the Win9x days, I would reinstall windows over the top of its self, this more often than not worked fine.

If I remember correctly, in the Win 9x days if you did that it would simply place the reinstalled Windows in a folder called WINDOWS.001 if it discovered an existing WINDOWS folder.

That never happened to me, or at least the installer would still ask me what folder to install in and the default was still always WINDOWS, so it installed into the same folder.

Hi folks,

I am terribly sorry I did not answer before now. I had trouble with my PC and when I got it going again, I had forgotten my questions! I just reviewed my notes and saw I had not answered you all.

Again. I am sorry for my forgetfulness!

I certainly appreciate your help!

I took srg86's advise and reinstalled Windows ME over itself and it is working fine. Thanks for the info !

Sincerely,
Dede

srg86 wrote:

boing wrote:

srg86 wrote:

Back in the Win9x days, I would reinstall windows over the top of its self, this more often than not worked fine.

If I remember correctly, in the Win 9x days if you did that it would simply place the reinstalled Windows in a folder called WINDOWS.001 if it discovered an existing WINDOWS folder.

That never happened to me, or at least the installer would still ask me what folder to install in and the default was still always WINDOWS, so it installed into the same folder.

Yeah I did that trick too. I actually rescued a Dell system the other day and I thought there was a WinXP license on the side like the other one I picked up at the same time, but... it's WinME. So I'll probably be rockin' that bad boy with a fresh install sometime. Ugh.

Dede wrote:

Hi,
I have Windows M.E. on my pc and would like to know it it is possible to format only Windows M.E. without deleting any thing else on my HDD.then reinstall Windows M.E. without lossing any thing on the HDD?
If possible, how would it be done?

Thanks in advance,
dede

Apart from the haters of ME, I use it as a DVR. Works just fine. But for your question, as others here have said, easiest thing to do is reinstall ME over ME. Or if you have the availability, move the programs you want to an external and just reformat completely.