[wildflower35]

I am a single mother of a 13 year old that has been out of work since May due to back surgery. Being the crazy person that I am, I tried to get "free" help from someone who said they knew what they were doing. I have now found out that it was not the hard drive at all but the cable that went from her CD-ROM and DVDROM Burner that went out and not her hard drive.

The person that "tried" to help me was trying to test the hard drive to make sure that was not the problem and installed Windows 98 on it and now I cannot get the computer to even work at all. Which was actually the problem in the first place. Now I don't have a recovery disc for Windows XP Professional 2003, because I did not know I should make one, I am not compuer literate at things like that and only have the original Windows XP Professional disc.

Is there anyway that I can reformat her harddrive so that I can put the Windows XP Professional 2003 back on her computer or am I pretty much stuck with having to take it in to a shop? Her father, my ex, bought her the computer for Christmas last year and she has not had her computer now for over 3 months because I don't know what to do to fix it.

My computer is 7 years old and has Windows 98 second edition and my cd-rom does not even work, so I doubt it would be any help to her. It has cause her problems with her school work since she does not have one at home now and we have had to go to the library when it is open and we have access to it to get everything she needs completed when we can.

I would really appreciate any help you could give me on this matter.

Thank you very much for your time and efforts.

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what is exactly is the problem? you need the procedure of reformatting the drive?

[sharksharkk]

what is exactly is the problem? you need the procedure of reformatting the drive?

[wildflower35]

The VERY first thing that happened is my daugher had a friend over and the friend was on the computer (last all she will admit to me she downloaded was AIM, even had to use my daughters cell phone to call her because she would not answer or return my calls) and when my daughter tried to boot her computer up the first day after the girl left, I got this blue screen telling me all kinds of memory was dumped, etc. That is all that I was able to get to come up. I was then able to get into her BIOS change which way her computer was to boot up and then inserted the CD that came with her computer and that did not work.

Another "friend" of mine told me he could take it and fix it. He took it and FIRST told me it was the Hard Drive. He had left it at his "friends" how and his friend took the hard drive out put it is a Gateway computer, hers is a Dell and installed Windows 98 se on it.

Now I have been told that is not her hard drive, but her DVD Burner and CD Rom are burnt up. I got tired of trying to go by what this friend said and then called my friend that had fixed my problem in the past. He tells me it is the cable that goes from her mother board to the DVD Burner and then the CD Rom that is her problem. We actually had another cable, it was just not long enough to show that both these devices are working properly.

Now my problem is that I have WINDOWS 98 SE on her hard drive, need to re-format the hard drive, so I can get Windows XP Professional put back on her computer. I have been told by several people that I should have made a start up disc, but NOBODY told me that before I needed to know the information. My main problem right now is getting the WINDOWS XP Professional put back onto her hard drive.

Thank you for trying to help me. I am pretty good with step by step instructions, but am kind of show right now as I have had two surgeries in the last 6 weeks and the last one was back surgery! Aren't I in lovely shape here : ) At least I am still kicking and making my progress to get back on the road to recovery!

[dsenette]

step #1 smack whoever installed windows 98 on your computer in the face (are you sure that the hard drive currently has 98 on it? how do you know this?)

Step #2 make sure that whoever this was...doesn't currently have YOUR hard drive and gave you back THEIR's (on accident or otherwise)

if you do in fact still have the original hard drive..and it does in fact have windows 98 on it.....to format it and reinstall windows xp you just need to put the XP cd into the cdrom drive (that works) and boot the computer (turn it on) you SHOULD get a message that says "press any key to boot from cd"...press any key on your keyboard and the setup process should start (IF you don't get the press any key message..then you need to boot into bios..usually f2 or del during bootup..and set the boot order to be the cdrom first...save the changes and reboot) choose the option to install windows.....at this point you may have one of two options...(maybe 3..) IF the system detects a current install of windows xp...you can try the repair option to repair that install...if it DOES not detect a current install of xp you can choose to delete the current partition and make a new partition, format it (as ntfs) and install windows on it...

i guess an easy method to find out this info is to boot to the xp cd and see what you get as far as options

[wildflower35]

I completely agree with you on the slap in the face. I fist would be more appropriate, but I am not a violent person, too bad!! I am sure I got my own back. I did try to insert the cd rom and reboot, but did not work. this is when I was told I should have made a reboot from disc, disc.....been through all the other steps and looks like my only option left is 3!

Thank you very much for letting me know how to try!! I know my daugher would thank you also!!

[dsenette]

with an XP disk...and a WORKING cdrom drive there is USUALLY not a need for a boot disk of ANY kind...as long as this is an actuall xp disk...and not a system restore disk or soemthing like that

you COULD attempt to get a boot disk from www.bootdisk.com if you've got a floppy drive you can make a floppy bootdisk... then you would put the floppy and xp cd in and set your boot order to boot to floppy first then choose the option on the bootdisk to start with cdrom support..which should boot the xp cd

[sharksharkk]

i suggest relooking at the bios setup to see what device it loads first. i know you said it didnt work but sometimes it may look like youve chanegd hte option but in fact in a notehr section lies the real option to change the startup method. so unless youre positive you didnt miss anything, check again. (i dotn see any reason of why you shouldnt be able to load from cd unless there really is a problem with either your harddrive, cdrom, or the cables connecting your cdrom and motherboard. another suggestion: are you sure you have in your hands your own original system and not one which may have been given to you by the person who tried to fix it? he may have given you something faulty.)

Edited by sharksharkk, 29 August 2006 - 01:31 PM.