Upgrading to XP pro question

[ingeborgdot]

I have a friend that wants to give his older computer to his mother. It is a Compaq and he has since upgraded to XP pro form ME. Anyway I was doing a reinstall using the upgrade disc he has when it ran into and error that a google search did nothing to find. I lost the paper I had the message written on but the search pulled up nothing. Well, I had to quit the reinstall but now when I go to retry again it is telling me I need to reinstall the original ME from Compaq before I go on. Problem is they can't seem to find the original disc. What can a person do to get it to go or are we out of luck?

 

[DelJo63]

find a means to get a Command Prompt when booting from ANY CD.

If the HD is mounted, it will be the C:\ drive

cd to \Windows

rmdir -r *

your install will no longer complain and complete the operation.

BE AWARE: this will destroy the registry and your logins. Consequently, you will need to
create new user logins (you can copy their data into the new directories)
reinstall all your programs;

 

[ingeborgdot]

I guess I am not sure what we need to do? Not smart enough to understand what you are trying to say.

 

[Tedster]

obviously you have an XP UPGRADE disc. You will need the original ME disc to go on. Perhaps you can borrow one.

Otherwise you will need to buy the FULL XP PRO disc.
A secret is to use the XP PRO FULL disc and use the serial # with the UPGRADE disc. (perfectly legal), then you might be able to return the XP PRO DISC to the store (maybe not) - but you will have an extra copy at least.

 

[ingeborgdot]

I have an xp pro disc of my own. Would that work?

 

[Killer_Byte]

yup should do.

 

[nickc]

ingeborgdot,

be sure and use the # off the first install.