Computer question

[Toy4x4]

I have two hard drives, one master and one slave. The slave is from my previous computer and have Win98 whereas the master has XP Pro. I kept it because it still had info on it that I didn't need/want on the new one. It has a virus that I/Norton cannot get rid of. Is it possible to delete Win98 off that drive and not screw up the rest of the info? Can it be deleted just like a regular file? Any tips?

 

[integrare]

Just make sure you move all of the files you want to save out of any folders or sub-folders in the windows folder. Other than that, you shouldn't have any problems. Could you have more viruses on your 98 drive that could infect your new XP system?

 

[Mamala Bay]

Got to look at partition of drives. Win98 and XP are different...You got conflictment!!!

 

[XS650]

quote:

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Originally posted by Mamala Bay:
Got to look at partition of drives. Win98 and XP are different...You got conflictment!!!

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It's been a couple of years, but here's how I remember doing it.

Win XP can be taught to read a win98 formated hard drive. It wasn't dificult. IIRC it was as simple as plugging both drives in and selecting which one I wanted to boot from by selecting it in bios. If you don't want to boot from the Win 98 drive, then all you have to do is plug it in as the slave drive and read it from XP. It won't work the other way, Win 98 won't read a NTFS (Win XP) formated drive.

My wife's Sony laptop came from the factory with NTFS and FAT32 partitions on the same hard drive

 

[newtoncd8]

Can you boot into Safe Mode (F8 when WindowsXP is starting up) in XP and run Norton AV to quarrantine / delete the file?

 

[XS650]

Toy4x4. Run this by someone who knows something before you try it, just in case there is some problem I'm missing.... If you install the Win 98 drive as slave your computer won't try to boot from it unless you reset the bios. You will be able to read your 98 drive files from Win XP. I suggest running Norton on the files on the 98 drive before you open them.

[ November 03, 2004, 01:23 AM: Message edited by: XS650 ]

 

[Bobert]

As long as XP is using the master hard drive and it is the bootable partition, you should be able to delete the Win98 on your slave hard drive. If you want to format your slave drive your XP files will be untouched (just be sure to format the correct drive

). Or if you just want to delete all your files off your Win98 drive you can do this using Windows Explorer (not Internet Explorer), which should be the easiest way. If your going to simply delete the files from within Windows Explorer, perform this operation from within Windows XP (not Win98).

Depending on the type of virus, some viruses can embed themselves within the partition table, so a full format might be necessary. Most likely though you probably don't have to worry about, as this type of virus is more rare.

Edit: tried to clarify.

[ November 03, 2004, 02:21 AM: Message edited by: Bobert ]

 

[Pick]

It is possible to do a fresh XP install with a FAT32 file system, I just did it. Why? Because I dual boot to Linux, and Linux will not read an NTFS, but will a FAT32. I can be booted up in Linux, and go over to the Windows partition and view/retrieve files.

 

[TorqueLock]

Toy4x4,

You said that Norton can’t get rid of the virus. You should have had the opportunity to quarantine the file(s) identified. Make sure that your NAV is the latest version and has been updated with the latest virus definitions. As far as saving old stuff from the old drive, your best bet is to us XP’s backup utility and backup your entire “slave-Win98” drive to your new master/XP drive. Then use XPs’ “Disk Management” utility to
partition and format the slave drive.

 

[Virtuoso]

Copy over wanted files (make sure they're not infected ocourse); repartition and reformat.