Re: Will Windows XP Upgrade Help Me?

Hello everyone,
Thank you all so much for replying and trying to help me, I really,
really do appreciate it alot, thank you.

Also lets just clarify a few things...Ideally I prefer w98 SE, as it
truly is my favorite OS and yet I can appreciate and enjoy w95 and ME
as well, my issues with XP is that MS changed too much. They took what
was a long running beautiful interface and altered too many things,
there is just some stuff about XP that annoys me, while I know it is a
more "Stable" OS...I am sure in few years it will be looked at like
junk as well, everything is always getting better, more stable, more
secure, etc. But with vista and all the other new gen OS' it will be
proven faulty as well, not that there is anything wrong with XP, that
is just how evolution works.

I have two XP's in my house as well, along with the 95, 98 SE and the
ME. Three are online, we want to fix the ME and four online, everyone
in my family has their own computer but we're currently one short.

ALSO I assure you that this is NOT an illegal machine, It was my
aunts, but many people were allowed to use the computer freely and
many installed questionable things and or went to questionable sites.
The computer was and has for years been without anti-virus software,
that is partially why I say questionable because it was at the mercy
of any threat.
The machine was bought Legally from a girl my aunt knew, the previous
owner bought it brand new and had it for few months but she hated the
thing. So she sold it to my aunt for $700 it came with all its papers,
books, software, recovery disks, warranty, etc. But when my aunt moved
to this state to live with us, she had a couple she knew help her move
and she had a bag of cd's, mostly music cd's worth well over $200 that
the couple stole from her, in that bag was the recovery disks.

Yet we still have all the papers and booklets, etc. Warranty long
ended though.

The machine is aprox. 7yrs old.

I would love to get the ME running smooth, I would be fine with it
running w98 SE, ME or XP...Since my aunt will mostly be the only one
using it, the OS doesn't matter much to me, so long as it works.
Also I had no idea you could "downgrade" to an older OS, we could
really put w98 SE on there?

Patrick:
I don't know much about linux and never heard of ubuntu, could you
explain this in more detail?

Also as I said before the current state of the PC is an unresponsive,
but reactive floppy and cd drive...meaning it will recognize media put
in and try to run it, but never seems to be able to get it going. It
only starts in safe mode and refuses to boot in windows, I can throw
it into DOS though, but those are the only start modes it wants to run
right now. I also know hardly nothing about Safe Mode and DOS so they
are very unfamilliar territory to me. It will not open any programs as
I said because it only goes in safe mode I am prompted with a message
telling me it will not open/start these things in safe mode.

I am completely un-concerned about what is currently on the PC...I
want it wiped clean, don't want nothing from it. Just wanna get the
darn thing running again...

I'll work on getting the specs, but as its in a box right now I can't
exactly type in the #'s from the machine, so thats gonna be tricky.
I'll go check out the restoredisks website and I await more info on
the linux thingy.

Thank you all again,
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Topaz

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Which msconfig.exe to use?
    ... In W98, it is very easy to select Safe Mode, or Command Prompt from ... as there is a display during a delay at startup. ...
    (microsoft.public.win2000.general)
  • Re: Upgrading to Windows XP from Windows 98
    ... I copied the setup files to C: ... ran w98 in safe mode ... (safe mode saves the day! ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)