marielisa2

Personally I like AdAware by Lavasoft. I have been using it for years and run it at least once a week (or when I start getting pop ups). It has always been able to remove anything that has showed up. Try it out, it can't hurt and it's free.

The COA is tied to the computer. I did not read far enough down the page (that’s what I get for doing this while I’m at work), thank you I will try this out this weekend. Yes I understand the COA is tied to the computer. I wasn't referring to the COA on the computer when I joked about selling it. I was referring to the new COA that would come with the disk if I had to buy a new disk, since I won’t be using the new one, I would be using my existing one. Yes that is true, I'm not blaming anyone, just trying to get it formatted. I have always used fdisk when reformatting a computer. I have used Ctrl+F11 in the past but have found that the computer still doesn't seem to run as clean as doing fdisk. It was never a problem until my Win XP disk broke.

Yes I understand why I am unable to use the restore feature that is why I am trying to locate a disk. And I was only kidding about selling the CoA though it will not be tied to a computer since I do not need it I allrady have one.

lol, yes it is a problem. Sadly no they are no longer under warranty. I will probably just end up spending the money to buy a licensed oem copy (hey maybe then I can sell the CoA with no disk since I don't need it, lol), but I figured maybe someone else out there had run into the same problem and knew of a resource I had not found.

No I am not trying to get pirated software. This is what happened. I have 2 dell computers that I had reformatted in the past, they both came with windows xp home on them (installed with an oem disk). Because when I reformatted them I did it using fdisk (I had a oem copy of xp at the time) the restore disk that comes with the dell's will not work, which was fine because I was doing a clean format not a restore. While installing xp on the one system something went wrong with the cd rom and my disk exploded into about 50 tiny pieces (not sure how this happened). I have tried calling Microsoft but they say I have to go through dell to get the restore disks, I have called dell and all they can do is resend the restore disks which does me no good because I cant use them because I reformatted using fdiskand the alt F11 wont work either for the same reason. Both computes have legal valid stickers on them and I can not use the retail disk I have because the COA's for both these systems are for an OEM disk. I'm kind of stuck, Microsoft can’t help me, Dell can’t help me. All I need is a disk but I don’t want to have to pay for another licensed copy since both system have a legal key code on them. I just can't believe it is so hard to get ahold of a disk

I have been trying for months to find a copy of a Windows XP Home OEM disk. I dont need the COA I have that already I just need the disk. Does anyone have any idea where a person may be able to aquire one? I have tried all the auction sites and I really don't want to have to pay for the COA when I don't need it. If anyone could offer me any sugestions I would really appreciate it. Thanks, Lisa