I had a game in progress, but now I want to re-start.
But I cannot/know not. When I "go to town" the old game is loaded; even when I
delete the charaters the hirelings are still there.
Is it necessary to delete the MM2 program? No problem to download it (just the
MM2 to the whole Limited Edition) again?
What must I do, please?
My thanks in advance.

Just create new characters. Delete the old ones if you want.
As I recall, the "quest status" bits were saved with the characters themselves. There's no changes to the world itself. By having a different party, you are starting over.

I think the problem fed1943 is describing is that even when starting with a brand new party, the hirelings that the first party rescued are still there, i.e. the new party won't need to rescue them again. Is that right? To my knowledge, WizardStan is correct about quests and stuff, but that doesn't solve the hireling issue.
In that case, I'm not sure how to reset everything (I haven't tried playing with a new party myself). My best guess as to what you should do is to backup your roster.dat file (so you don't lose your old characters, in case you want them again) and then try uninstalling and then reinstalling the game. Hopefully this will reset the roster file so it will not have any of the hirelings in it. Then you just need to make a new party and go. I doubt that it's possible to reset the hirelings without completely resetting the roster file though, so if you've already made your new characters you will probably have to make them again.
Post back and let us know if it works.

I would think that the MM2 save files are listed in the directory. Just rename any files with a date of this year with .old or whatever extension you feel is appropriate. Start a new game, and hopefully the hireling issue is taken care of.

Actually, the only save file is roster.dat. I know because I've been moving it back and forth between my desktop and laptop so I can keep playing when I'm away from home. The problem is that roster.dat stores the data for all the characters you've made, and also stores the data for the hirelings. If you make an entirely new party, they're stored in the roster along with your old ones. Playing the game with the new party means that basically everything starts over, EXCEPT apparently the hirelings that the first party rescued are still available for hire. On a fresh install of the game, the new party would need to rescue these guys all over again before being able to hire them. That's why I suggested a reinstall to fix the problem (after backing up the roster file)... I think you need a completely fresh roster file in order to truly reset everything.
Here's another question for fed1943: When you made new characters, if you start the game, what year is it? By the time I finished the game a few in-game years had passed... if you make a completely new party and try to set out with them, does it reset back to year 900?

So, I deleted the MM2 game and downloaded and installed it again.
The game began new.
Just the defaul characters and the advice from Corak's ghost at start of game.
All looks good.
No hirelings showing in the roster, while not sure where they are, because I had
them in another city.
But I guess the problem was solved.
Thanks.

The original game made you make a copy that was used as a save disk, once you started a game the in-game clock kept ticking. So even though you could wipe your current party and roll fresh ones (quests do reset for them) some game elements didnt reset, such as calendar and hirelings. In the olden days you could just make a new copy of the save disk and start fresh but now you can simply re-run the MM installer and unclick everything except MM2 then just change the install directory. You'll need to watch the desktop shortcut as it may reference the original install. Other than having multiple copies of a game thats <1mb I dont see a drawback.

I haven't played the PC version in years (I ended up playing the Sega Genesis version to finish it). But on the Sega version, there is an option on the front screen to "Initialize Game." That would restart it. I just can't remember if the PC version had that option.

It does not appear to. I think the only way to reset everything is to reinstall the game, to generate a fresh roster.dat file (after backing up the old one, of course).

Haven't been playing this, but just as a suggestion you guys could just backup the original roster.dat file before you start so you have a "fresh" copy without having to go through the annoyance of a reinstall.

Yeah, the thing is, I'm not sure the game will run if you just remove the roster.dat file from the directory. The roster file for a freshly installed game is not empty, it contains the pre-made characters that come with the game. I'm not sure if the file is created when you run the game or if it is copied over when installing. Does anyone know the answer to this? If it's possible to just delete the file (after backing it up) then as jvolpert said that's easier than reinstalling.

I'm not suggesting you just delete the roster.dat file without replacing it. I'm just suggesting that somebody do a fresh install of the game and make a backup of that brand new roster.dat file before messing with it. That way, in the future, when somebody wants to "reset" their game, they can just copy that original roster.dat file back in the folder instead of having to reinstall the whole game to do it.

Oh! That makes a lot more sense, and is actually quite good advice. Sorry for the confusion.