On Thu, Feb 23, 2012 at 9:49 AM, <joe@actionline.com> wrote:

Much as I despise widows and everything M$, for the same reasons that one
should avoid selling one's brother-in-law a used car, I am resisting the
urge to try to convert my nephew to Linux for now.

Instead, I just need to find a fast and efficient way to get his win-xp
box restored to a working state ... and I do not have an xp disk and key
available to reinstall.

So, surely would appreciate any guidance from the plug brain trust on this.
I wasted 4 hours yesterday using the HP restore function and when that was
done I could not get the control panel to display so I could delete a lot
of stuff that I suspect is causing the system to run incredibly slow and
continually self-reboot.

This sounds like a virus. You might have tried to boot into Spybot Search and Destroy initially.

But I understand there are two types of HP restore. I would refer to the HP site and follow their suggestions:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?cc=ca&dlc=en&docname=bph07103&lc=en#N282

There's a torrent available with an ISO, which you can burn to boot to restore to SP2, but it might also be less than secure:
http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/4616501

HP will send you a restore disk, if you didn't make one, also.

You will need an XP disk to reinstall. Maybe someone on the list can help there?

Help!

---------------------------------------------------
PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:
http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss