I bought a computer for my son on ebay. He wanted it to play games online. I thought this system would be fine for that. It came with windows 2000 pro. No disks included. Everything is preinstalled. Problem is he has had it for about two weeks and upon boot up it says it is missing files for windows 2000 and needs the disk. I bought the full version of windows xp. Im not quite sure how to go about getting it on the machine. I only want one OS. How do I get the old o windows off and get the new one on. PLEASE help me. My son is really disappointed.

if you dont have anyhting to back up it's easy. first go into the bios and set the first boot device as the cd rom. put the xp cd in and start the pc, follow the prompts and format/install the new os. you should write down what types of cards are installed in case the drivers do not auto install with xp.

It's even easier than that Mike. While booted into 2000, all he has to do is put the XP CD in the CD-ROM and let the autorun bring up the "install XP" window and go from there...

true, I am so used to having to tell people to change their boot devices, I didnt even think about it like that but you are correct

True that you can "upgrade" the pc from W2K to XP via W2K but I wouldn't recommend it under these circumstances. Clearly the W2K OS is corrupt if asking for files. Much better to follow the procedure of booting the XP cd and wiping the drive to start fresh. I would recommend you download the drive manufacturers diagnostic utilities and run them first to be assured you don't have a issue with the disk. If something is wrong with the HD a new install will still have problems.