Reformatting Questions with XP

My friend wants to reformat her computer due to the extensive amount of spyware and such on her computer. When she goes to reformat from her XP disk it will not let her because it says, 'the XP you wish to install is and older version.' How can she get around this and reformat with the 'old' XP and just get all the updates from Windows later?

 

Stick the cd in restart (you may have to change startup device in bios) delete the partition and away you go, ive never seen the older version before so im guessing she's trying it from the desktop?

 

Yes, I think she is trying to run the upgrade from within windows. Booting from CD-ROM you can downgrade to previous versions of Windows. Stick the CD in, boot from the CD-ROM (probably going to have to change the boot order in BIOS) and it should work fine. Make sure she deletes / reformats the partition that XP is on once it boots from the CD, and she should be fine.

 

The problem your friend is having is because she's not really reformatting the drive; by merely putting the disk in and trying to reinstall, she's basically doing a "dirty install" by trying to directly overwrite the existing installation with the older copy on the original disk - that, of course, would be a set-back from the pov of the current installation, so it's not doing what you've asked it to do.

Instead, what you need to do is do a clean formatting of the hdd first, for example by d/l ing the Ultimate Boot CD, burning it to CD/DVD, and then booting from it and using one of the formatting apps on it to clean format the hard drive.

Once that's done, there won't be any existing installation to interfere with the re-installation from the original CD - of course, once that's done, you'll get to spend an evening or two with MS update while all of the various updates are d/l'ed and installed - been there, done that, and it's not a lot of fun; bring a beer or two.

 

yes, boot w/ the XP disk and format........... at the flash/boot screen, you can change the boot order on many pc's by hitting F12- or some other F key

then install..............

 

Thanks everyone.

I'm just going to drive over and do it for her. I can do it if I am sitting in front of the screen. And yeah, she informed me it IS a desktop.

:/

Thank you for the help too!

 

Good luck.

 

Problem solved. It was a simple boot from disk...
She just didn't know what she was doing.

Thank ya'll for the imput.