Laptop reformat question

[Huckleberry]

I will be reformatting my mom's laptop this week. I am assuming there is really no difference in steps that I need to take when doing a laptop versus a desktop. Am I wrong in assuming this? I've never messed with laptops before.

[jimbo1763]

There have been a few posts recently regarding lots of difficulty in reformatting Compaqs, which in some instances may have a part of the system information on a hidden partition that gets wiped off with the reformatting.

Are you using a plain OS disk, or are you using a system restore disk?

[Huckleberry]

hmmm, well, this is a compaq so that is most interesting. I was going to use just a plain old win98 disk. I may still have the system disk but it always comes with so much garbage software I didn't want to use it.

[jimbo1763]

See this thread. http://discussions.hardwarecentral.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=151680

Yours may not be subject to the issue.

[Ponch]

Originally posted by Huckleberry
hmmm, well, this is a compaq so that is most interesting. I was going to use just a plain old win98 disk. I may still have the system disk but it always comes with so much garbage software I didn't want to use it.
But ou may wan to use the "Compaq Diagnostic" partition that avoid booting from floppy when you want to change something in the setup (once a year ?). So keep that (first, non-dos) partition and format the rest with your Win98 cd.