I am not familiar with using recovery cds. Basically I have to reset the laptop back to the factory settings. The operating system is XP home. I have 3 CDs (disks 1/2/3). I have it set in the BIOS to boot from CD. If I insert the first disk it will boot up in WINDOWS 98 not XP Home. It asks if I want to continue with recovery (giving usual warning about deleting everything). If I try to continue it just will not continue and I have to abort. Surely to restore I would have to boot up in XP mode? If so how can I do that when it keeps coming up with Windows 98. Any advice/suggestions would be helpful. As a matter of interest when one resets it to factory settings does that usually have all the other software preset eg Microsoft Works etc Many thanks

If the recovery cd is from the manufacturer of the laptop and the laptop had these programs installed from new then the answer would or should be yes to works being installed, with regards to your 98 question, have you upgraded the laptop to XP? The recovery disk shouldn't have 98 on it??? The reason it wont restore is probably because the filing system in XP is NTFS and 98 is FAT32, so when you boot with a 98 cd it can't see the NTFS partition. What you need to do is get hold of an XP CD or contact the shop where the laptop was purchased and ask them about it. There is another way but it involves burning some files to a cd from you hdd then booting with a program called ranish to remove all the partitions then to use a 98 boot disk to access the cd to install XP, a 98 boot disk can remove ntfs partitions but only if there is one partition. If i was you i would just get hold of a XP cd backup all needed files and re-install. Hope this helps to answer your question.

Sound like it may be a Compaq or HP laptop. They are FAMOUS for sending the wrong (or no) recovery CD's. The problem may be that they did not have the CD's needed at the time and may still not. I have had customers send them money and wait 6 weeks or more only to recieve a letter or call telling them the CD's are no longer available. Apparently the production guys think it's ok to just send whatever they like. Jimi_l

The laptop is an Advent 7011. I used a Windows 98 bootup floppy and fdisk. It said that Fat32 was not installed. When I checked it only had the C drive with NTFS (100%) I think there must be something wrong with the Recovery CD. As I have a XP Home Edition Cd (for my main pc) I intend to start from fresh and reformat it (NTFS) and then reinstall from new XP Home. I have the Product Key Number (on official sticker on bottom of laptop) so I will just enter that. Ideally I would have liked to just use recovery cd but it appears I have no choice. Thanks for your help/comments

You should be able to boot from the home cd but if this is going to be done on a 2nd pc then xp home might not work as it has already been registered on the other pc. You should get some options to remove partitions etc when the install starts. With regards to fdisk, this can be used but you will have to remove the non dos partition option 4. This will only work if there is 1 ntfs partition.

You should be able to call the manufacturer for support to get the right cd for restoration. I would do this first before messing with your OS installations. Like scotty said, you could only have XP installed on one pc. Home requires activation and Microsoft will not activate it if you are putting on another computer. Pumfa