Old lady lost windows xp

[Andrew Farris]

On Fri, 2009-11-13 at 20:34 -0700, John Heinen wrote:
[snip] 
>  Thank you Lucio, but not all things are created equal as well as
> people,  This woman likes windows for the games and a little internet
> activity  John

Ubuntu had most, if not all, of the same games, and access to the same
internet, with less risk and hassle. You could even set it up for her so
the interface looked just like that version of windows she's so familiar
with. 

additionally, since she seems to want windows so much, why bother with
puppy at all? she'll likely never use it, and as others have pointed
out, you still have yet to reveal any issues you might be having using
Ubuntu, nor any questions even related to Ubuntu. 

In fact, the only thing I've gathered so far from your thread is that
you want to wipe a hard drive with XP on it to put win98 on it, and you
seem to be unsure how to proceed. So...here's my advice:
     1. Download/Burn Darik's Boot and Nuke from here:
        http://www.dban.org/download.  I assume that since you have at
        least some interest in linux, you are also reasonably competent
        at burning bootable CDs.
     2. Stick the CD in the computer. As the computer boots up, go into
        BIOS (there's usually a screen that tells you to press X key to
        get to 'setup' or somesuch...hit that. Typical keys are Del, F1,
        F2, F11, F12, though it could be anything else)
     3. Once in BIOS setup, look for a tab/menu about 'boot order'.
        Every BIOS is different, so I can't tell you exactly where it
        would be, but it should be easy enough to spot. Once you find
        it, make sure the CD drive is at the top of the boot list.
     4. Run DBAN in 'automatic' mode. this might take a few hours, but
        it will carefully, and meticulously wipe the hard drive clean
     5. remove the DBAN CD, insert whatever OS CD you want, reboot and
        do your installing.

Alternatively, you could get an ubuntu liveCD, and use gparted on there
(System > Administration > Partition Editor) to erase the partitions
which would be faster, but if the computer is very old, it may not be an
option to use a full-blown LiveCD like that. There's also the option of
a gparted liveCD, but I think you've got enough options already.

If you are dead-set on installing win98 though, be warned... in case
you've forgotten what its like to live without decent auto-tools that
assist with things like installing drivers etc easy, then you'll have a
hell of a time with windows 98. You probably will have much difficulty
finding hardware drivers for things that don't work (if you dont already
have drivers), newer software (even seemingly mindless simple games)
probably wont work well, if at all, and 98 was victim of a large number
of critical bugs, faults, etc... that you might want to be aware of.
Want more Info? here: http://www.computergripes.com/Windows98.html
That's a much better summary than I care to write.

Hope that works out for you.


-- 
Andrew
_____________________________
Registered Linux User: 473690
Registered Ubuntu User: 22747