I received a new laptop for Christmas last year - thought I'd be smart and upgrade my old laptop because the OS was in really bad shape after years of abuse.

Left the darn thing unattended for a few months and now when it boots it asks for a key or something -

I was thinking I might just reinstall an older version of windows (like Win ME) so there would not be a key conflict, however I cannot remember how to boot from CD (the floppy drive is inoperable)

The laptop is at home and I am at work - could someone give me a few things to try at home?

Thnx a lot

You need to set the boot sequence of your BIOS to have it check your CD-ROM drive first.

When you first turn on your computer (before Windows loads), press either DEL or one of the F-keys (typically F2 or F10) to get into BIOS. Refer to your laptop manual for more info on this.

And if you're going to install an older OS, I'd use Win98 instead of WinME. Or... if you're really advenutous, look into Linux. There are some distros that work beautifully on older hardware.

usually xp will do in your laptop...if it runs on win 98 it will also run in win xp...but you need al least 64mb ram..xp is a bootable disk...so just put you xp cd and restart your computer. xp will start installing and overwriting you old OS...

and pls give the specs of your laptop...

Edited August 17, 200521 yr by Dee dee's lab