Uninstall WinXP??

Hi all - and thanks for the useful info I've learned from reading these posts! apologize in advance for my length.

How do I uninstall WinXP Home?

This isn't on my pc, so I can't give you much detail on the pc - but I'll dive into the question with as much info as I have.
A friend of mine was having some problems with Win98SE - so he bought WinXP Home Upgrade version, and installed it over the 98. (I know- upgrades=bad).

Everything was going fine and he was getting thru the driver variations and then it pops up with Activation - so many days.
He tried to activate online, but it wouldn't go thru, so he calls to activate, and they tell him he can't activate because the authentication # has been used previously. (It sure looks authentic - but not the issue at hand).

He waits til the activation days are up, and wants to uninstall WinXP and just put his 98 version back in.
Now, there isn't a manufacturers recovery disc, so that option is out; he didn't save any win98 files during the upgrade, so he can't just revert back to it. When he boots up, it asks for a bootable XP disc, but will not accept the XP Upgrade disc he has.

Any help/suggestions here?
Thanks a bunch!
teresa

where did they buy the xp cd, from ebay, or a odd purchace of some sort? if they bought it from a shop, new in the package you should be able to get them to exchange it, or atleast inform microsoft of the situation and get something.
as for going back to 98, the uninstall never works well, not at all if you converted the drive to ntfs during the upgrade. if anyone has a copy of any windows operating system 2000, ME,98,95,nt4,3.1, even if it is a format and recovery disk. drop in the xp home cd, make sure the cd is the first boot device, when the cd boots the computer and ask which drive/partition to install on, highlight the one xp is on now, delete it, then recreate it and format(full ntfs) it will at some point ask you for the previous version of windows, drop in someone's cd long enough to let it verify, finnish installing xp, you will have a clean install, and 30 more days to sort this all out.

Thanks KC -
I don't know where he purchased it, I thought it was bestbuy or circuit city. I'll let him know to take it back to see if they'll make it right. If so, a replacement disc might work as the boot disc.

The Cdrom is set to first boot device - when he tried to boot from his Win98 disc, and when he tried from WinXP upgrade it wouldn't accept the disc. So the next problem would be finding a disc that it will accept as boot. (Or a highly charged electromagnet - seems appropriate to me! heehee)

We were previously discussing a new hard drive anyway, so if all else fails, will just pop in a new one....

and Thanks again!
teresa

If the information on the drive is not important, I would blow the drive away and do a fresh install of windows 98 (providing he has the disk and the key **note I believe Micr*s*ft is giving theese keys (for 98) away due to the fact that they do not support it anymore)

if in fact he cant do the format, he could use a third pary partitioning software such as Partition Magic and make a secondary partition where the data can be baced up and a new install can be performed.

I would suggest a fresh install. Most of the time Upgrading is bad enough, when trying to remove the upgrade its even worse.

The second thing is the disk he purchased. I would return to the store and demand a different copy. The amount of Warez XP is crazy. Im sure that someone either slipped the disk in the old package, or stole the key.
Either way XP is still a more stble OS. If he can try and get the XP working.

Cheers!

HTH

you can go to
http://www.bootdisk.com/
download a windows 98se oem bootdisk.
it is a self creating file, just instert a formatted floppy and double click the file, reboot the computer with the floppy in the drive, if it does not boot from the floppy(A drive) set the bios to boot the A drive first, when booted from the floppy, start with cd rom support,(doesnt really matter for the task at hand) at the A: prompt,
A:\fdisk
just put in fdisk and hit enter, y for yes you want large disk support, select option 4 to display the drive info, see if your partition is fat or ntfs, if it is fat choose option 3 and delete the primary dos partition, if it is ntfs choose option3 and delete non dod partition, then use option 1 and create a primary dos partition, use the size your partition was, unless you want to change it(personal choice) and exit fdisk, you will now be prompted to reboot. after the reboot, allow the floppy to start the machine again, with cd support, at the dos prompt,
A:\Format C: /s
the drive will now format and be ready to take a install of most any windows os. before, with xp on the drive, 98 would not install from the cd because the partition info xp uses will not allow it.