He doesn't want to lose the info on the hard drive, so I'm going to see what I can do.
I've got a USB hard drive enclosure, with which I should be able to back up whatever's on his HDD onto my laptop. I'm just not sure of the best way to then go about reinstalling windows onto it.
It's a fairly old PC, running win98 and I'll probably put that back on it (XP would cause it a brain haemmorage as it's only got 128, possible 256 RAM).
Is there any way I can do that from my laptop while his HD is in the enclosure? and if not, what's the best way to go about re-installing windows onto his HD? and incidentally, if I can get a boot disk to take me to the dos prompt, what should I be typing there to try and fix it (have to say, my dos was never good, and I'll be buggeredif I can remember it now).
If this was my own computer, I'd be happy to just have a bash and see what worked... but it's this friend you see.... and when I say friend I mean my girlfriend's dad, who at present doens't like me. So fixing his computer can only make things better. Unfotunatley, breaking it even more will... well... not be good.
Thanks!!