Hi everyone,

Hope you can help.

My mother was given a pc which had a pirated copy of xp on. I want to delete this and add a verified copy to it. I know this involves the BIOS somehow but not sure what to do.

Also since the pirate copy has been on there, whenever i boot up it now say something like "Please insert system disk." I am now stuck at this screen and cant get past it. I am worried this is irrepairable.

Hi doubleshortz, welcome to SAF

Once you have a Windows official XP CD, enter BIOS (usually by tapping the [Del] key on post screen), set the boot order to CD first boot device, HD second boot device and insert your Windows XP CD. Save changes to your BIOS (usually by hitting the [F10] key).

The system will restart from the CD. Follow the prompts and perform a fresh install of windows from there.

After that, you'll need to have the motherboard/chipset, sound, video and network drivers from your system manufacturer, as Windows generic drivers may not work as expected on all hardware.

Chris

We'll certainly try. What is your system? Is it a name brand (Dell, HP, etc) or is it a custom build? Read below.



Not necessarily. Depending on what type of computer you have, it may offer a boot function option right from startup. On a Dell, for example, it will tell you to press F2 for setup (BIOS) and F12 for boot menu where you can choose the boot device. This saves you from having to go into the BIOS to change your boot options. Look to see if something like that shows when you start the machine. If you do have to go into the BIOS to change the boot order be careful what you click on.



This is because it is not set to boot from a CD-Rom or the cd itself contains a boot error.

Also, XP is very adept at supplying most board and device drivers, at least to get you started. If you don't have a driver disk, you can normally find them at the system manufacturer's website. If not, then it's a matter of searching according to the mainboard and whatever is plugged into it. However, if Windows doesn't pick up the drivers and that is the only computer you have available, then connecting to the web may prove impossible. I would strongly suggest you have another Internet connected system nearby.

Thank you guys for your help. I always find this forum to be the best around for supplying answers. If all goes to plan you will have my upmost gratitude.

Well it didnt go to plan. i have 2 screenshots which i would like to share with you. 1st one is where my install gets stuck at 53% and second one is where is tells me there is an error and windows must shut down. I did nothing untoward but set to boot from cd and overwrite a partition with the pirate xp on.

Ok i tried to paste pics of problem but for some reason (The total filespace required to upload all the attached files is greater than your per post or global limit. Please reduce the number of attachments or the size of the attachments.) They only toal 164kb! If anyone needs the screenshots im me for e.mail addy.

Install Irfan and open the image(s) in it, then resave them as .jpg and tic the 'Show options dialog' at the bottom. That will open another dialog box with an Image quality slider. Slide that back to about 70 or 75% and then hit 'Save'. This should make the image under 100K, which is the size limit for images on this forum. You stated that they "only total 164KB" which should present no problem if they are posted individually in seperate replies, as long as they don't exceed the 100KB limit, and are of an acceptable format.