I have a question. My daughter recieved an older laptop from her grandparents for Christmas (this was not a gift really, but rather they did not want it and wrapped it up) it was on her list however. It is a Gateway, nice nice laptop. Problem is....it has Windows 98 only so I cannot load her Itunes on that, nor some of her games.........I have a newer version of windows here, so how do I go about loading that one and taking the old one off? Can I even do that?

Thanks in advance!!

RRW

You have two options: Upgrade in-place or reformat and do a "fresh" installation. The fresh installation is the preferred method, it's cleaner and you won't have any baggage left over from Windows 98 to cause problems.

If you're not familiar/comfortable with how to do this you may want to grab a friend who is. It's a pretty straightforward process, but sometimes you can run into snags that will require a little more in-depth help.

If you want to forge ahead on your own, here's a link to a pretty good step-by-step of the process.
XP Clean Install

If you have another PC available, you might download the drivers for things like video, sound, and NIC from the manufacturers website ahead of time and put them on CDs or diskettes so that they'll be handy if/when you need them.

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Now I cannot find the disc for xp that I needed......................someone gave me one, to switch this one to Pro because we have xp home, but now I cannot find the disk..............is thier anywhere I can download even maybe windows 00 sp4? that is the minimal for itunes. Thanks for your advice, and I have NO idea how to do that. I am not afraid to dig for info though, and am pretty literate on how to clean things out, just not the little snags you are speaking of.

you also might want to upgrade the memory, you can easily do that for less than $100.

Surely members on this site are not encouraging software piracy....

I wouldn't recommend downloading operating systems via any torrent. Who knows what the original source packed in with the ISO. Best bet is to go to Newegg, Amazon or even Ebay (check your seller) to purchase a copy of Windows XP (I wouldn't spend any less than $50, as the 5 year old OS is no longer worth a $200 license). I would suggest Linux, but then you would be out both iTunes and PC Games written for Windows.

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Go to computer masters (or someother computer store) buy any piece of computer equipment and they will sell you an OEM version of Windows XP home for less than $100. I prefer to reformat the hard drive before loading the new windows. So much cleaner. Talk to a computer tech and they should be able to get you a format program.