can't use com

I bought a hewlett packard CPU in a yard sale it had no monitor or software it only came with a keyboard & mouse. soo I took it home hooked it up this monitor and it worked fine it was a windows 98 version and had a window xp upgrade cd that I had used a few times before so I decided to upgrade this cpu to a windows xp it was slow so I decide to try and upgrade it a second time to erase everything that was in it and try to make it faster well when I got the to activate windows xp part I got and error telling me that I couldn't activate it and to call microsoft so I called them and they told I would have to buy another upgrade cd to activated it. Well the windows xp had 30 days to use it and now that 30 days has ran out. I can not use the com now and when I turn it on it asks me to activate windows xp which I can't do if I click remind me later it gives me the option to log off and shut the com down I can't even run another cd to upgrade it. What can I do to be able to use the com again? Would a floppy start up disk for windows xp start it up so I can fix it and activated it with new software? please help!:idunno: :bawling:

A start up disc for 98 or XP would start up the computer.

Whether this would get round the "activate windows XP" I don't know or even in safe mode.

You said "windows XP was slow" XP needs more CPU power than 98 this may be why the m/c runs slow.

One of you problems is "had a window XP upgrade cd that I had used a few times before"

One thing you could try is, if you can get in into Safe Mode you could do a System Restore.
Start / Programs / Accessories / System Tool / System Restore / Restore my computer to an earlier time / next / SEE IF YOU CAN PICK AT DATE BEFORE YOU DID THE SECOND UP GRADE THEN / Next

Just a thought

Myself I think you have two options

1) Reformat and put back windows 98

2) Buy a new up grade CD put window 98 back on then up grade with your new CD

But you may find the computer still runs slow.

Old-un

thanks for the suggestions I don't know how to restart it in safe mode I never could figure that out and I don't know how to reformat it either. I tried to change it back to 98 with a CD I already have before I screwed it up this time I guess I should have left well enough alone.:bawling:

I just tried to reboot the com with the floppy windows 98 disk and the CD it always takes me straight to the activate windows screen I've given up!

If you do not know how to reformat the drive I would not attempt it.

I would ask someone that does.

I would not have tried to reformat a hard drive until I saw someone do it on my computer.

To get into safe mode you just keep tapping F5 when you are booting up.

You may have to set your floppy drive as the first boot device in the machine's bios if it's not booting to the floppy drive.

Once this is accomplished, you should be able to use fdisk to delete all partitions (FAT or NON-DOS) on the hard disk, then create a new FAT32 partition. Once created, format the partition. Then run the 98 setup.

If the hard disk is larger than 64 GB, grab the updated fdisk utility from here;

http://www.d-a-l.com/dan/FDISK.EXE

and copy it to your Win98 boot floppy. This will handle disks up to 137 GB.

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