Ok I upgraded to xp pro a while back and it slowed my computer by an extremely vast amount. since then i have had nothing but trouble and recently began having trouble with "bargain Buddy" and other adware, spyware, and viruses that no scan can get rid of. SO I want to reformat my hard drive and revert to windows 98. I have tried everything I know of to format it but it always gives me a message saying it cant be done because something on my computer is using my hard drive. Any ideas on how to do it? any help would be greatly appreciated. thx Mike

Get a Windows 98 Boot Disk from: http://www.bootdisk.com Make a Boot Disk. Boot your computer using the 98 Boot Disk you made. Use command FDISK to delete all existing partitions , reformat the drive and reload 98. Wesley Please use the "Alert Me" button in the top right hand corner of this post if I can assist you further. Wesley Johnson

Be patient, give it time, visit a forum like this & learn XP. I have reverted back to 98 so many times i forget. I hated XP at first but folk told me to perservere, i did. Now i could never go back to 98. There are plenty of folk in this forum only to willing to help, including me myself. One day 98 WILL be extinct. Might as well get used to it now. Go visit blackviper.com. The articles in his site will help you speed up XP. Is Ye Alreet

I'd be willing to bet XP isn't the problem. Rather, the problem is that you are trying to run XP on a (presumably slow) Pentium II, with probably the minimal amount of RAM.

Yes, Black Viper is a brilliant resource when you want to speed up Windows XP. If I'm on a slow computer (<700MHz) I usually disable all services but the following: Remote Procedure Call (RPC) Workstation Shell Hardware Detection Plug and Play Windows Audio This speeds up the computer immensely but you may need to re-enable some services to get back to full functionality. Disabling the Themes services and setting the Visual Effects (find it under the Advanced tab in Systme Properties) to "Adjust for best performance" will speed up computers with old or integrated graphics. Then I usually follow the Windows XP Super Tweaks that Black Viper has written (find it on his website). Here's a few tips to prevent malware from reaching your computer in the first place (I presume you are the only user of your machine): 1. Have just two accounts on your system: the Administrator account and a limited account. Rename the Administrator account to something different. Use the limited account for your everyday usage and only log on as the Administrator when you want to install/uninstall programs or change system-wide settings. To configure the type of user account, click Start and then Run. Type "control userpasswords2" (without quotes) and click OK. 2. Install Ad-aware, Spybot - Search & Destroy, Bazooka Spyware Scanner, Spyware Blaster and the free version of AntiVir (from www.free-av.com). Update all of the programs' reflists and update the virus definitions for AntiVir. All of these programs are free and help prevent/get rid of malware (which includes dialers, adware, spyware, trojans, viruses and so on). Run these programs every week or so and your hard drive should be free of malicious code. 3. Install Tiny Personal Firewall to protect yourself on the Internet. Download all of the Critical Updates and Service Packs from Windows Update and let them install. (You'll need the Cryptographic service running for Windows Update.) Install the latest chipset drivers for your motherboard and the latest drivers for your video, sound and network card. 4. Only allow Tiny Personal Firewall and AntiVir to be running in the background. Disable the Welcome screen and set the PC to automatically log you in. (You can set this in "control userpasswords2".) 5. Install all of the software you require and then defrag your hard drive(s). For more software and tips/fixes, go to www.tinyapps.org and www.dougknox.com respectively. I hope this helps, James