[SEL] O.T. Need Computer Help - Not Me

Listerdiesel listerdiesel at gmail.com
Mon Mar 28 23:47:45 PST 2005


On Mon, 28 Mar 2005 16:42:19 -0600, Paul Maples
<paulmaples at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> My Sister purchased a Gateway Desktop computer a couple of years ago, it had windows ME on it so this will give you an idea of it's age. Anyway she got on the internet with no virus protection and the next thing I know she is calling me and telling me that her computer will not do anything. I told her to do a system recovery on it but she knows little to nothing about computers and said she could not get it to do a system recovery. I later learned she had put the wrong recovery disk in first, she had put the one in that had all of the drivers on it and not the Operating Systems. By the time I got it someone else had installed Windows XP on it, it only has 64 Meg of Ram on it which is not enough to run XP efficiently. Also with Windows XP in it now it is not recognizing the CD drive.
> 
> Anyway I am trying to get Windows XP off of it so I can put the original Recovery Disks in it and try and do a system recovery but I don't know how to dump the Windows XP operating System so I can start over, can someone tell me what I need to do.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Paul

You'll need to make up a boot floppy disk for Windows ME (on another
machine) then boot from that and start ME installation. That should
give you the option to replce the XP installation.

The other alternative is to format the drive and wipe it clean then do
a clean install.

We have always had a DOS installation on all our machines to give us
the option of starting up in either Win2kPro or DOS (only Win2kPro or
XP allows this dual-boot BTW IIRC) so that we can use the CD drive
under DOS to do installation changes or whatever. Always worth
remembering.

Peter
-- 
Peter A Forbes
Email: listerdiesel at gmail.com
Web: www.oldengine.org/members/diesel



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