WHERE have you been?! This is your area.

Are you talking about a system restore? That would start everything over yaknow? Would that be best for what's happening here?

It depends on the type of install you did.. But yeah she would prolly choose the entire disk to install it on. Without knowing how to create a partition to install an OS onto is not the most beginner thing in the world and alot of times the OS requires that you know where to place all the files and back up files...even though I think they all go onto the same partition. But like you said reformatting in and of itself might work out some bugs she was having. You can reformat a partition to install a new OS (dual boot) not very difficult... this way she could keep her data.

This is what I thought. This is what I always think to do when I get problems with it. Just kick start it over.

Oh if only.....I'm better off with Frys or my uncle in New York, he does this for a living.

Just a thought, what about add/remove programs? That way I won't have to start over. I'm looking for ways not to, see here.

I saw you a few times in the forums...I was gonna say something but I could not think of anything... You may want to have someone walk you through a dual boot after creating a partition..this does not require you to restore files and folders... as system restores usually lose programs do they not??? With a dual boot you can reformat a partition on your HDD and still keep all your files as they were.

Add/remove may help some, but even after you uninstall a program files and reg keys are still left on your computer a lot of times.

You should have. I would have said something back. Far as I know those things require being next to a computer nerd as he does it. But if I had the steps, maybe I could try, I've never heard of a dual boot before. I always pressed F10 after anything would crash, this I don't want to do though. How exactly does one do a dual boot without a nerd next to you?

Guess that'll take me at a fork in the road. Is there a way permanently extract a program so that doesn't happen?

Read up on it online to get an understanding of it, then follow the instructions carefully. When you install Windows, it should walk you through it, but print out the instructions so you have them just in case. It should walk you through partitioning your HDD and everything, but you may still lose everything.

I've had Windows and Linux in a dual boot it's not hard, but you do have to understand what you're doing. I've had Ubuntu, which walks you through the whole process.

You may want to have your uncle or somebody else more familiar with computers do it for you though.

After uninstalling with the programs uninstaller (recommended if they have one) or ad/remove (next thing to do if program has no uninstaller), manually removing the left over files and reg keys. Other than that I don't think there's a way.

You don't want to mess around with the registry unless you know exactly what you are doing, it's very easy to mess things up in there.

Ugh, these problems would all go away so quickly if I could get in contact with the person that fixed it. Sucks. Too bad its impossible.

I could give him a call in Brooklyn. I know he works at home so its easier to reach him since he works late.

Thanks for baring with my computer illiterateness. Certainly know more about this stuff now.

Getting it professionally looked at, that's what I'm going for here. Whenever I try to fix things myself, I end up breaking it, and its not even broken, just wonky.

Computers are a passion of mine. I have a web hosting company, went through a Cisco class in HS, and everything else from typing to website design and computer graphics. Been doing websites since I was 13 and have dabbled in graphics here and there, mostly for myself and my websites.

I've messed up computers to the point where even reformatting wasn't an option. I guess you could say it was on purpose, they were junk computers I was just messing around with learning things on.

I like them too. I have a lot of my creations saved on here from when I had Paint Pro, I just play around with it. I think it'd be cool to work as a techie. I'm pretty decent at date entry and familiar with HTML and certain codes for site building. As far as making things pretty goes, that's me.

What's your site called?

Totage Hosting
http://www.totagehosting.com

Some computers weren't meant to be saved. But I think mine is. She's taken a swift beating over the years but she's been good to me and all the times I pressed F10 she's forgiven me. I guess you could call mine a junk one by that standard lol

When you say f10 I suppose you are reffering to entering the BIOS screen correct? It is f2 and f10 or 11 on mine. There is a couple ways to do it. First you enter the disk management ( I usually enter this by going to the control panel and entering disk management into the search box). You can partition the HDD during the install b ut it is a little easier to do like this. You right click on what I am guessing is your only partition (C: drive) and click on remove section or something to that nature. Lemme check...shrink volume is what you want to click on. It will ask you how much space ... on this your guess is as good as mine. You will want at least 10-20 GB prolly more like 50 or 100 depending on how much space you have.

DO not activate the partition .. my OS is 7 and if a partition is prepared to have an OS written to it ... it will be black and say un-allocated on it and I am pretty sure Vista and XP are exactly the same if not very close.

Next you'll need an OS I have a key that you can enter into the command line to get a 30 trial although most OS's allow you some time (assuming you burned an image online of like XP or something).. you can download it online and burn it to disk ... lets say you have Windows 7 and you wanted to download XP professional (which is what I am going to do).

Once you have an 2nd OS ready to install you will want to enter the BIOS... it usaully says press f2 or f10 f11 ect on the Windows logo screen while loading the OS. There might be 2 menus to choose from but do not worry it is not hard to find what you will be looking for. When try and boot from your newly burned disk it will automatically boot from the same OS and not allow the CD to run when it needs to, to perform the install. The reason for this is the boot sequence (remember that name)...your start up menu (BIOS) should show things like system clock, system, processor, disk drive ....menus to choose from.. one of them is the boot sequence...this is what you want...if you try to change it ...it may issue a security warning and you'll have to go to a menu below named security and enter a pass code you have entered in the past...you may not have one...either way you will want to de-select the HDD..hard drive or whatever your C: disk name is. This will force your PC to boot from the OS that is in the optical disk drive...make sure the optical disk drive is selected (on mine it has a number next to it and yours will to) the optical disk drive should say DVD/CD drive or soemthing to that nature...make sure it is selected
so that the CD will boot...now if you did that right it should boot from the install CD... when it asks what kind of install you want to do you click on advanced... it will ask something about the the disk and partitioning... you will at this point want to direct it to install to the partition you created...In the past I have had problems with this on Linux...I feel pretty safe saying all files it may ask you about... can be written to the to the same partition that you crweated...

make sure all writing goes to that partition you crreated....if you do it right it will offer a choice of two OS's when it boots....you may also want to download a boot manager to ensure that no problems occure. It is not hugely difficult but things can go wrong pretty easily and you'd have to reformat your HDD if you do not know exactly what you're doing..even had you backed up your files you would not be able to restore them unless you wrote them to an external disk if something were to go wrong.

By junk I meant secondary and older. Yours seems to be primary and older, so not so much junk. lol