Re: Reinstalling XP on computer from yard sale?

Tech-Archive recommends: Speed Up your PC by fixing your registry

"John" <jwhnews@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

My wife picked up a computer for our 4-year old son at a yard sale.

It's an emachines computer, and it has a label on the case with the
microsoft product key.

The computer boots up fine, but there's lots of stuff that pops up,
there's lots of junk installed on there, and apparently some of the
programs don't work properly. I can log on as some of the 'limited
users', there's one account I can't guess the password to. I haven't
been able to log on as an administrator. I'd like to do a fresh
installation of Windows.

Unfortunately, she didn't get the original software CD's (or recovery
disk, etc.).

Is there any way I can do a fresh install of Windows on this computer?
I can probably find someone to borrow a Win XP Home CD from, would that
work?

Or maybe there's a recovery partition on the emachines hard drive?

Thanks for any help you can give.

John

Boot into Safe Mode and log in using the default account named
Administrator. That one usually does not have a password assigned to
it (unless the previous owner specifically created one). From there
you can do several things:

1. Delete unwanted user accounts using Control Panel - User Accounts.

2. Remove all login passwords by using Control Panel - Administrative
Tools - Local Security Settings and set the minimum password length to
0 (= no passwords).

3. Open a Command Prompt window and enter the following command:

NET USER <user_name> <new_password>


Good luck

Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP (1997 - 2006)
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

"Anyone who thinks that they are too small to make a difference
has never been in bed with a mosquito."
.