cavalry said:
My daughter recently purchased a used laptop with XP Pro. It has a student
user but we cannot find an administrator to add software, etc. Any ideas on
how to start over?
With second-hand computers, especially if acquired from strangers
but perhaps even if acquired from a family member, your wisest course
of action would probably be to format the hard drives and start fresh.
You don't want to get in trouble because the original owner may have
filled the hard drive with kiddie porn, or have problems because the
original owner downloaded/installed viruses or other malware.
Simply boot from the WinXP installation CD. You'll be offered the
opportunity to delete, create, and format partitions as part of the
installation process. (You may need to re-arrange the order of boot
devices in the PC's BIOS to boot from the CD.)
HOW TO Install Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;en-us;316941
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html
http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/clean_install.htm
--
Bruce Chambers
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