How can I reboot into dos from NT 4.0?

[treestump]

Hi All
I have a workstation running NT 4.0 whose harddrive needs to be reformatted. I would like to get it into Dos. However, when I try in uninstall anything, it asks for the adminstator password. Unfortunately, the previous system administrator left no information at all. Any suggestions as to how I can clean out the hard drive.
Thanks in advance
Stumped??

 

[Tubot]

If you do not need any of the data off of the drive you could use fdisk to nuke the drive, or you could restart the NT install process (boot from the cd or the 3 floppies), there are options to repair the installation. There are options then to rebuild all the user accounts. But be warned, I have never been able to do a repair that actually worked, I always end up doing a complete rebuild of the machine.
Good luck.

 

[TheLad]

If the drive is formatted to NTFS, you won't be able to easily access it in DOS (as DOS does not read NTFS partitions). Doing what Tubot said is your best bet I'd say.

If you do want data off the hard disk, you can slave the disk into another machine and pick up the data that way. -----------------------------------------------------
"It's true, its damn true!"
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[stevieblunder]

I'm not sure this will get you access to everything, but I would install a fresh copy of NT4 SP6, or Win2K. Then, running from there, the old OS becomes just regular files.

A quicker way is to take the HDD out and connect it as a slave drive in another machine.

You could keep a loose HDD with service tools and OS on it, and connect it as the master when you have to do this sort of thing. Unlike NT4, W2K is fairly machine specific and will only work on machines that use the same chipset etc, ie PnP OS. So I'd stick to NT4 SP6. The video may default to VGA, etc., but it should boot on most any I386 hardware.

Hope this helps.