No Floopy drive and need for reboot to 2000

[bezatkinson]

I have a sony vaio laptop which is brand new with no floppy drive and windows XP installed.

I have programs, which work only on 2000 and so need to reboot to it. I have tried using bootable cd's but the bios is set incorrectly and I can't access it because it is masked behind a Sony logo screen.

What I would like to know is how I can remove Xp and format drive c: without the use of the floppy and a bootable CD if anybody could help it would be much appreciated.

Laptop Spec:

Windows Xp
800mhz processer
256 memory
14GB hard disk
3 USB ports
DVD drive


From Andrew

 

[Lonman]

What I would like to know is how I can remove Xp and format drive c: without the use of the floppy and a bootable CD if anybody could help it would be much appreciated.

Telekenis? lol, j/k.

At the boot screen try pressing F1. If that doesn't let you into the cmos setup, then you'll need to go to Sony's website, get a manual on your laptop, and find out how to access your cmos.

 

[bezatkinson]

Sony's Answer

Thanks Telekenis for the quick response

Sony say that they want people to stick to windows XP so they dont support instructions for changing as for a way of entering the bios they said that it can be entered but only with the correct password of which I don't have

From Andrew

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What I would like to know is how I can remove Xp and format drive c: without the use of the floppy and a bootable CD if anybody could help it would be much appreciated.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Telekenis? lol, j/k.

At the boot screen try pressing F1. If that doesn't let you into the cmos setup, then you'll need to go to Sony's website, get a manual on your laptop, and find out how to access your cmos.

 

[Lonman]

What I would like to know is how I can remove Xp and format drive c: without the use of the floppy and a bootable CD...

You can't.

Get the password, or clear your cmos so there is no password (back to sony for the manual).

You have to be able to boot to something other then your hard drive to do what you want to do.

 

[Lonman]

Now, there is the option of partitioning your hard-drive and installing 2k on an extended partition. The partitioning is easy, with PowerQuest's Partition Magic. The installation part will get tricky... 2k won't install alongside XP without a third party boot-loader... but, I think Partition Magic might help you there too. Doing it this way will give you two operating systems, XP AND 2k.

My advise would have to be to get into your cmos by hook or by crook. Use some kind of bootable CD to partition and format your drive into at least 2 partitions. Install 2k on the primary (C) partition, and then install XP on the extended (d) partition. During the second, XP, installation, XP will automatically set-up a boot-loader that will allow you to choose between OS's.

 

[bezatkinson]

PowerQuest's Partition Magic

where can I get PowerQuest's Partition Magic

from Andrew

Thanx For the Help

 

[Lonman]

You have to buy it. That's why I suggested the other alternative 'hook or by crook' method.

http://www.powerquest.com/partitionmagic/

 

[bezatkinson]

Thanx for all the help I will have a fiddle around and see what I can do and if the worst comes to the worst I will buy PartitionMagic

from Andrew

 

[Adre]

I am always hearing on how to partition so that you may have to versions of Windows, but what if I wanted to run XP and something like Solaris 8? Could I use PartitionMagic, or would I need 2 hard drives? :\