3 Operating Systems on one old computer...HELP!

[RedBrain]

Ok, my mom had an old computer that she had 98 on. She tried to upgrade to Win XP and it just put WinXp on in adition to 98.

I tried to reinstall WinXp and now it has 2 copies of Win Xp and win 98.

It never gave me an option to upgrade or overwrite the old ones.

My question is this: is there any way to completely delete everything and just put Win XP back on? We don't need anything from that computer any more.

I just want one operating system on it.

[Alanoll]

delete the partitions, format, install.

Use whatever progam you want, but just wipe the harddrive clean. format it, delete all partitions. You could use FDISK form a Win98 startup disk to delete the partitions, and Windows XP setup will then format and install to a brand new partition with everything else being gone.

[RedBrain]

I'vr never had to do anythin like that before and really have no clue where to start.

Is there any place that might give me step by step instructions?

Thanks

[crofttk]

RedBrain:

I'm pretty sure you can do all those operations -- delete and reformat partitions --from the WinXP install CD itself !

This is particularly easy if your Mom's machine can boot from the install CD. If not and you have to launch setup from within Windows, you should still get those choices early in the install procedure. If you're using an upgrade install, you'll have to provide her Win98 disk/CD at some point to complete the upgrade whether you reformat or not.

I'm not dead certain how functional your Mom's machine is at this point but just wanted to point the above out to you.

BY ALL MEANS, IF YOUR SURE YOU DON'T NEED THE OLD DATA AND PROGRAMS, A CLEAN INSTALL FROM SCRATCH IS DEFINITELY YOUR BEST BET.

Good Luck !