bill gates blues

[WA1GFZ]

Anybody know how to uninstall xp pro after the 30 day to register runs out.
I'm stuck in a loop with my son's machine. Do I have to install his hard drive in another machine and delete xp?
I can't even install win 95 over it to clean it out. The machine has a license for win 2 k so that is what I want to install.

[W1RKW]

Frank,
Was XP installed as an upgrade from a previous window OS?  If so, you may be able to simply uninstall it by going into Add/Remove Programs from Control Panel.

You might have to do this from safe mode.

If the drive was switched from FAT32 to NTFS you may have to FDISK the drive by installing the drive into another machine.
Bob

[Pete, WA2CWA]

You could boot from a floppy and then manually go in there and delete XP. You would most likely also have to replace the hidden sys files and command.com. Some windows CD's have an add/remove option also on them. Boot from the CD. You would first have to go in and change your machine drive boot sequence.
If you have the Win 2000 CD, boot with that and then try to remove XP.
Personally, after going around with 2 Windows ME installs on the same machine in less than a year, when I decided to switch to XP, I booted from a floppy, copied as many files and directories as I wanted to retain to a second hard drive, and then reformatted the entire C drive and started fresh.

[WA1GFZ]

I installed my xp pro into my son's machine then shack machine. When I went to register the shack machine to bimbo in India gave me crap about multiple machines.
She directed me to MS to get another license. The number she gave me was some trucking Co. tracking no.
I did the process again and next time I told the out source expert that I bought a new machine and moving the software.  I didn't have the nads to try it again with my sons machine.
Now here is the real problem. I'm stuck in a loop "do you want to register" no= log out. Machine will not boot from CD or floppy even if I change the bios.
And to think XP pro was the first software I actually paid for.
a software expert friend told me win 2K is the last software where gates is not in your shorts. gfz

[W1RKW]

Frank,
Can you boot XP to the command prompt? Or go into safe mode?
What if you clicked yes to register but disconnect the internet connection?

[WA1GFZ]

sorry Bob tried dat too. I'm about to throw it in the truck and pay Kaplan 40 bucks for win 2k. my copy won't load.  I even cleared the bios. I deleted everything on the hard drive from another machine. It is either pay kaplan or pay bill gates.
I've wasted enough Saturday and want to play radio.

[Ian VK3KRI]

If youve got a linux install CD floating aroud, try booting of that, starting the install, and at some point  it'll ask if you want to keep or destroy the existing partitions etc, give the right answers to let it rip and create new partitions. Once it looks like stuff is starting to  instal, you can probably bail out  and boot of the Windows install CD. My observation is that Windows will ALWAYS try to install over linux, and particualy if the partition table is screwed up as far as MS goes.

Another option if you have a 'live image' linux cd is to boot off that and zero the first 1M of the disk with

# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=1024 count=1024

[Blaine N1GTU]

do yourself a favor, forget XP or 2k and install Ubuntu Linux
its very user friendly and well supported.
http://www.ubuntu.com/
its a single cd download
give it a try at least, if you dont like it you can always re-install XP
I have it running on an older box here and its pretty nifty

[W5AMI]

do yourself a favor, forget XP or 2k and install Ubuntu Linux
its very user friendly and well supported.
http://www.ubuntu.com/
its a single cd download
give it a try at least, if you dont like it you can always re-install XP
I have it running on an older box here and its pretty nifty

Or SUSE Linux.  Either way, you will be doing yourself a favor, and most everything that runs on a Linux platform is FREE!

[WA1GFZ]

I paid bill gates andnow he wants more. I think you guys are right he needs to go away. I'm considering building a machine disconnected from the blood sucker borg and his crazy haircut.

[Bacon, WA3WDR]

XP and ME have some sort of recovery system that makes them really difficult to remove.  With ME, people have had to do a full blow-away on the hard drive, killing the partitions, low-level format, everything.  I guess it's even worse with XP.

The machine won't boot from a CD or a floppy, even if you tell the BIOS to do that?  Whoa.  Try booting from a floppy without the hard drive, at least you'll know that the motherboard still works.  There is executable code in the boot sector of hard drives, and I guess MS wrote this code to just take over when the sector is read, like some sort of worm.  If so, I wonder how it could be controlled.  Maybe it can be stopped if the drive can go into a non-Intel machine.  Then if that machine can modify or kill the boot sector, you can recover control.  Sheesh!  Fifty-some billion dollars, and Gates has to do this crap.  Hopefully he'll prove to be a good salesman for Linux.

I've heard about Sony's rootkit scandal, and I think I read that Microsoft did something similar.  I guess it's true.

[John Holotko]

XP and ME have some sort of recovery system that makes them really difficult to remove.  With ME, people have had to do a full blow-away on the hard drive, killing the partitions, low-level format, everything.  I guess it's even worse with XP.

The machine won't boot from a CD or a floppy, even if you tell the BIOS to do that?  Whoa.  Try booting from a floppy without the hard drive, at least you'll know that the motherboard still works.  There is executable code in the boot sector of hard drives, and I guess MS wrote this code to just take over when the sector is read, like some sort of worm.  If so, I wonder how it could be controlled.  Maybe it can be stopped if the drive can go into a non-Intel machine.  Then if that machine can modify or kill the boot sector, you can recover control.  Sheesh!  Fifty-some billion dollars, and Gates has to do this crap.  Hopefully he'll prove to be a good salesman for Linux.

I've heard about Sony's rootkit scandal, and I think I read that Microsoft did something similar.  I guess it's true.

It's easy, all you have to do is overwite the MBR inm the boot sector. The MBR basically controls what takes place when the boot sector is read. This is commonly done when people run more than one operating system from the same machine, say Win XP and Solaris. You install a boot  loader program such as LILO, Grub or System Commander and it  overwrites the MBR so that when the MBR is read during subsequent boots it runs the bootloader menu program  which lets you select what OS you want to boot. You can do the same thing

If you want  to get  rid of XP and all it;s artifacts the best thing to do is boot off a floppy or a utilities CD that contains the basic low level disc utilities. You can use FDISK to clean out the boot secor and while you're at it use FDISK  to nuke the XP partitions. Then install desired OS.

Note: Good idea to make multipartition disc if you are going to be useing more than one OS.

[Bacon, WA3WDR]

What troubles me is that Frank's machine won't boot from CD or floppy or the HD.  I'm not sure that it is possible to get to the MBR in that case.

So far my own machine will boot from floppy no matter what (if the CMOS is configured that way), and I have had luck using FDISK /MBR to repair a damaged MBR on the HD.  This has rescued the machine twice.  Then again, I formatted the drive FAT32, even though I use Win2000, and I use a Win98 setup floppy.

My machine was triple-booting (2000, ME and Mandrake Linux), but Mandrake died, so I wiped it off.  I use ME once in a while, to use my old version of Electronics Workbench.

[John Holotko]

Who  makes  the  machine ?? and what BIOS is it running ?

[Bacon, WA3WDR]

Yeah... Frank, what kind of machine is it, and does it have Phoenix or AMI BIOS?  Or maybe Intel.  Inquiring minds want to know.

[WA1GFZ]

Dell 1 GHz machine
When the 30 days runs out you have 2 options register or log out.

[John Holotko]

Dell 1 GHz machine
When the 30 days runs out you have 2 options register or log out.

What type of Dell 1 ghz is it ?? A Dell Dimension ?? desktop or Laptop ??

What I don't fully understand is why the BIOS is not allowing you to change the boot sequence ? Are you sure you saved the BIOS changes as you exited from the BIOS setup program ?? What happens when you go into setup and change the boot sequence  and then you save and exit from setup and then go back to setup ? Are the changes you made still there ?? Or does it go back to the way Dell had it set ? It could be that you're BIOS is password protected and not letting you make any changes.   Is the BIOS password set ? Do you have a BIOS password for the machine ?? If it's a password related problem there are ways to clear the password.  Otherwise you should be able to change the boot sequence and boot from a CD or floppy. I've never had trouble getting any machine (Dell or any brand) to bypass Windows and boot off something else.

 

 

[Blaine N1GTU]

hit the F12 key after post but befor the machine boots, it will give you the boot device selection screen.
pick the IDE CDROM device and you should be able to boot to the XP cd.

[WA1GFZ]

TNX Blaine I figured there was a function Key. I had a bad CD which was part of my problem. I later relaoded XP and good for another 30 days. fc