So I initiate a reinstall with my bonafide Windows disk which also includes Service Pack 2. I commence to reinstall and all goes well up to it saying it had 34 minutes to go to finish. Then it hung demanding a viaagp1 file. No matter how it was offered, it was refused. I had it on a flash drive, later I put it on a small CD. Nothing. I kept trying to reinstall. I got mad and tried to start a new reinstall.
The rest of the story is that I finally ended up in the Recovery Console and subsequently with great fear did a fix mbr. Lo and behold the reinstall continued past the 34 minute mark.
Now it has 28 minutes to go and has refused the requested dll files I offered it. I passed the first two by but the last one it gave me an error message that if I passed it Windows would not work. So I am stumped again.
You kind folks guided me gracefully through a rough patch while I built a new system a few years ago, the one I am writing from even now! However my other needed system is the one that is down. IS this something I could do from the Recovery COnsole or even in the wilderness of pure DOS? I have negotiated these things before but I am a nervous camper since it is so easy to get lost.
I could tell you all about it and will if you need to know but I'm guessing that the hardware stuff is not the issue here, just some Windows reinstallation issues that have probably been seen before by the wise men at Geeks to Go. I await your wisdom. Peter