dos+ ? = windows

[vicki lynne]

If windows is accidently deleted from a computer and now I think that it can only speak dos, how can I get it to speak windows again? :confused:

[classicsoftware]

The question becomes, how was windows deleted? Your last two posts have not given enough information for us to help you. Please post as much detail as possible.

[vicki lynne]

One of the computers I'm trying :) to work on belongs to a friend who was running win me. She tried to install xp and somewhere along the way she said she was asked if she wanted to delete the old windows files and she told her pc yes. Now she has a non booting pc. Can this be repaired? The pc won't boot from either cd rom or floppy. Both have been taken out and tested in another pc and seem to work fine. I have tried every operating system I have access to including win 95a, 98, 98c, 98se, and me. Can I fix this?

[classicsoftware]

Yes you can. You need to download Eraser 5.7 (http://www.heidi.ie/eraser/download.php) Install it on a godd PC and create a Nuke Boot Disk. Take the nuke boot disk to the new PC and boot to the floppy and it will erase the drive. Please backup any data files first.
Then you will have to determine if the PC can boot from a cd. If it can, you need a bootable Windows CD. If not you either need a Windows installation CD (95) or a windows boot bisk (98). You will also have to set the bios to boot from the CD

The preference would be to use the software that originally came with the PC.

[vicki lynne]

thank you very much. this is something I can work with. much appreciation is in order !

[jcnoernberg]

Here's what I did in your situation to erase everything and reinstall XP on an older machine... you will LOSE ALL DATA... so backup

after you computer boots to a prompt from the above mentioned boot disks... here's what I recommend:

-type A:\fdisk and delete all partitions listed

-use fdisk to create one primary partition

-REBOOT... very important

-boot to the dos prompt again, and type in FORMAT C:\
perform a full format.

Your CD drive should be working again at this point and you can install XP. That situation happened to me and I could not understand why my cdrom did not work (but worked in other machines).

[vicki lynne]

Thank you so very much. That last bit was extremely helpful and broken down into simple one syllable words that I can understand :D You can be my hero of the hour. :cool: