Hi..just bought a second-hand PC which has Win2000 Pro installed on it. I want to completely uninstall it and all files (FDISK everything!). In it's place I want to install WinXP Home. How do I do this? I've tried upgrading but you can't upgrade from Win2000 Pro to WinXP Home...and then there are keyloggers my gf installed which has brought me to this point...This PC is mine!!..just wish some people could respect that...Please help..desperate! Thanks!!!

Two ways at least: Boot with the XP CD (or the 6 floppies + CD) and run XP standard setup routine. Allow it to reformat the current partition etc. and install XP as per norm. T'other way: boot with a '98 bootdisk and run Fdisk routine to remove current partition; then reconfiugre partition afresh. You can preformat as fat32 if you wish. If you want XP = ntfs then reformat during setup, or convert it later from fat32 to ntfs. Personally I'd stay with fat32... (allows a few disaster options not easily there if ntfs...) Do you really want XP??? Is the PC OK for XP - even with that spec.; it may not be? Adequate RAM - min of 128Meg, preferably 256Meg even 512Meg??? Drivers as need-be for a Compaq? As for key-loggers... can these not be removed? Also if you allow the g/f (or others) access to your PC, then create standard user accounts for them; do not include Admin. priveliges for these accounts. Keep Admin password to yourself - for obvious reasons... Fdisk how to: http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q255/8/67.ASP

Hi there Trvlr! Thanks for the tips...suggestion one failed as this doesn't work..did it and WinXP just installed along side the Win2000. Gonna try suggestion two as my disk is divided into two (C:system disk and E:DEPO disk) and they are both ntfs as I have confirmed this thru DiskManager. Think I'll stay with this setup as it is easier. The reason why I wanna change to XP is because the XP package I have is original and the Win2000 disk I got from the guy who sold me the comp. is a copy which doesn't correspond to the one installed on the PC..not only...I tried to re-install Win2000 and the product key he gave me with his disk doesn't correspond either..so Ireally don't want to go around a hunt for Win2000 p.keys unless you have a solution to that. In regards to keyloggers..well ofcourse one can uninstall them but the thing is that I have asked her to uninstall the damn thing but she still hasn't. Therefore I am pretty pissed at the whole situation which just shows how women need to control men and alot of them just have no respect for other peoples stuff nor Privacy. I'm not in any mood to beg her to uninstall it...just format the whole thing and as you said install a password...guess she lost her privelege to use this damn thing. You gotta trust to get trust but then again sometimes people don't give a crap..too bad. Thanks again and will try

If you've already managed to get XP in alongside W2K then simply set it as default OS to boot and then delete W2K from the system; also edit out references to it in the boot.ini? Afterwards verify XP still boots OK, then empty the XP recycle-bin and defrag the drive to tidy up the scene. Any installed Key-loggers or other irritants (they will all be in W2K...) will go once you delete W2K from the system. Again set up standard user accounts in XP and keep Admin level acces to yourself. Also wise to create a user-account for yourself too - one that does NOT have Admin acess. Use that for normal use; use your Admin account only when necessary (and other folks aren't peaking/tweaking via your Admin account...). Once you have only XP installed, regularly run standard pest removers: AdAware, Spybot, Ccleaner, etc. to remove anything that might arrive and lurk in the background in the future, and of course a decent anti-virus util.