Uninstall/reinstall XP Home/Pro

Little_John

you will be promted to activate, let the online activation have a go if it fails then use the phone method. it is painless I have had to speak to someone a few times just tell them the motherboard has been replaced as it went faulty

claudio

Tried disc on another pc and it boots up. Just to ask again, could someone please guide this dummie through exactly what I should be doing from power ing up to installation. Ta very muchly.

JonnyThunder

There are actually a few different license options for microsoft products, and a heap more with Vista products. For XP, you have three basic modes. OEM, retail and Select. Select is corporate volume license. OEM is a machine wired version, and retail is a per instance type license.

To get things rolling tho. If you're sure the disk is bootable, you need to enable bootup from CD in your BIOS. As soon as you switch on the PC, you should see a message like "press F2 for Setup" or something similar. Usually F1, F2 or F10. When you do this, you'll enter the Bios setup screen. Somewhere in here under Boot options, you should see the boot order (1st boot device). Make sure you are booting from the CD first, then the harddisk second. When you save and exit, that should be it.

Also, make sure you press a key when it tells you do. When you boot from a Microsoft disk you always need to push a key to boot from CD. Just follow onscreen prompting.

Donnie

You write that you put it in a another PC and it booted up.

Do you mean that you turned the other computer on, put the CD in, and the re-started the computer at which point you were asked, 1. Boot from Hard Drive/Start Windows or 2. Boot from CD?


Once you select 2. Boot from CD you may be asked again to 'Press any key to boot from CD'. XP installation should begin. If this doesn't happen, you might not have a bootable disc or you could have a hardware problem.
You couldn't wait, could you?

claudio

Looked inside the box and realised that the DVD was connected to power but not to the motherboard...I'm not a techie and a bit slow. DOH, DOH & double DOH ! Many thanks to all MSE'ers. It works.