Seven years back I bought an Evesham PC that came with a restore disk (as opposed to a Windows disk). It served me well (with a RAM upgrade) until last year I bought a more powerful PC (oh, the joys of running Photoshop). On the Evesham PC, I put on SP2 and SP3 and everything runs fine, if somewhat slowly. Now that I want to reformat/reinstall everything so I can give it to my friend, I've uninstalled most of the programs, deleted most of the docs and pics, then set it to boot from the CD drive and popped in the Evesham restore disk. It warned me that it has a newer OS than the one I was trying to install and gave a BSOD. Now the only way I can get into it is to F8 and go in in VGA mode. Any ideas on how I can reformat and reinstall without these problems, please?
I altered the first boot to be from the CD because presumably it can't load and install itself from within Windows. XP is legit, as is the spare licence for Office which I'll also put on it for my friend, so it's maddening to have all this messing around. Wished I'd not told him about it till I'd fixed it. I would have left it as it was, minus my data, but it was running like treacle, so I thought I'd better reformat/reinstall.
Can you borrow a genuine Windows cd from anyone then Stella and use your key with that? You sound like you want a clean fresh install and not restore over the top of what you have. On your sticker it'll tell you what XP is installed ( probably OEM professional or home). Although there are ways to use any XP cd it's easiest for you to find someone with the same. I don't believe Evesham ever had their own oem version of Windows ( like Dell and HP ). Your restore discs sound like backup discs. As in a a copy of all the data once Windows was installed and not a restore clone of a fresh naked Windows install which is what you now need since the backup doesn't match the current install!
Thanks for your help. Yes, I have a legit full copy of XP Home from a PC that's gone to IT Heaven, and I tried booting from that, too. It started to install and I turned my back and there was another BSOD. It now tries to boot into Windows, but the only way I can get in is from VGA mode. In the end, I rang the local nice computer shop chap and he is going to do it all for me for 25 and have it ready in a couple of days. I hate giving up on things IT, but for that price, I really have better things to do with my time, so it's now there to be done. So my friend will get his nice PC and no doubt I shall get a drink out of it and everyone will be happy ever after - me and friend and computer shop chap
