How is your day going?

[Ronald]

Now I am attempting to use DOS to access the passwords files.  I loved using DOS commands.  They go right to the heart of the matter.

Hope you make out ok. Me I leave DOS where it is.

[camper6]

There's a lot of things that you can do in DOS that you can't using Windows.  And now I notice that Windows 10 will no longer be supported and a lot of computers cannot be upgraded to Windows 11 or Windows 12 and will become obsolete and more junk for the landfills.  It's ridiculous in my estimation .

[camper6]

I'm trying to figure out how to stop windows from booting up in the computer I'm trying to fix. Yesterday I took in a friend's computer.  An Acer All in One.  Monitor and computer together that wont turn on.  He paid over $800 for that unit. The tech figures it's the power supply.  It's only about four or five years old. So if it can't be fixed with a reasonable cost then it's more landfill. It's a shame.  He didn't need anything so expensive because all it was used for was by his wife to play games.  They could have kept the old unit that was working.  His kids believe in buying the latest and the greatest offering but that doesn't always work. People that don't understand computers shouldn't buy new ones unless they know what they are doing.

[Ronald]

I'm trying to figure out how to stop windows from booting up in the computer I'm trying to fix. Yesterday I took in a friend's computer.  An Acer All in One.  Monitor and computer together that wont turn on.  He paid over $800 for that unit. The tech figures it's the power supply.  It's only about four or five years old. So if it can't be fixed with a reasonable cost then it's more landfill. It's a shame.  He didn't need anything so expensive because all it was used for was by his wife to play games.  They could have kept the old unit that was working.  His kids believe in buying the latest and the greatest offering but that doesn't always work. People that don't understand computers shouldn't buy new ones unless they know what they are doing.

Power supply is not that expensive. I have changed maybe 4 or 5 of them. Crack the case open and look at the power supply, make sure you get the same one or a substitute for that one.

[camper6]

Turns out it was the motherboard and it's not worth fixing and it's a crying shame but that's life. My friend payed $800 for that unit.  He should have just kept the old unit for what it was being used for.  They only played games on it.

[camper6]

Anyway I got the laptop going and installed Windows XP Home Edition.

Thanks. When you mentioned optic drive that was the key.  I had a CD that I made years ago that I found. It was labelled XP Install - OK Installation and components. I put that in the drive and it booted up.  Then it asked me for the product key which I didn't have.  But the CD was made on my old ACER computer.  The label for the product code was missing. But I was able to load a small program called keyfinder and when I ran it it gave me the product key of my old computer.  When I put the product code in, it installed Windows XP in my Dell laptop.

I'm a happy camper.  Because now I can experiment and can probably install Windows 7.  I can do stuff with Windows 7 that I can't do with XP.  Once again thanks for your help and the reason I'm printing this out is for anyone else that might want to use it. People hate to throw stuff away and they ask me if I want it.  I now have 4 printers that I rescued and they are all working fine.  I load the cartridges myself.  It's fun.  That's the first time I have ever did a clean install.  I confess I didn't know what I was doing, when asked about partitions or whatever and still don't.  I also had a WD Scorpio Blue 320GB drive given to me that I can experiment with.

Let me know if you want your flash drives back. 

[Dave]

If you get Win 7 installed Camper and then want to upgrade to Windows 10 Camper let me know. I have an official Windows 10 image from Microsoft which I could upload to my storage area so you can download it and use it to upgrade. As long as the Windows 7 is genuine with an activated key is will install fine

You can just extract the iso file to a DVD and install it the way you did the Win 7, you might even be able to add it to a flash drive, it's been a while now since I used it

[camper6]

I see now that the computer will only boot up to Windows XP if the CD is there.  So next question. . Is Windows XP Home Edition that I installed now on the Internal Hard Drive?  So then I can change the boot sequence and it will boot up from the internal hard drive.  I'm new to this game so I really don't understand what is going on.

Also asking me if I want to activate Windows XP and 30 days left.   I have no idea what that means.

[Dave]

Yes XP will be on your hard drive, but no need to go into bios to change the boot sequence just remove the CD from the drive and the restart the computer. As long as there is nothing in the CD drive it will skip that boot option and go straight to the hard drive on it's own.

Under normal circumstances if we were back in the early days of XP you would need to activate it so you can get updates, but Microsoft is no longer giving updates for XP, so you could if you want skip that option, but you will always have the macine pester you to activate. It shouldn't do any harm to activate it, it might not actually work if you tried it but you never know stranger things have happened Camper

[camper6]

Thanks but I did remove the CD from the drive and the computer didn't start and went into trying to reinstall the XP operating system.  So I will change the boot sequence and see how that works. And thank you for all your help.  I did see C:\WINDOWS so I guess that's the install on the HDD. This saved me a 50 dollar fee from a tech and gave me unvaluable experience.

[camper6]

O.K. So now it boots up without the CD so it's coming from the HDD. New problem.  Cant't connect to the internet.  Says I'm connected but not able to connect to the internet.  Old equipment doesn't always work in machines or humans.

[Dave]

O.K. So now it boots up without the CD so it's coming from the HDD. New problem.  Cant't connect to the internet.  Says I'm connected but not able to connect to the internet.  Old equipment doesn't always work in machines or humans.

It might be that the windows security is blocking your browser. Go to Control Panel and then find the firewall settings Camper. Have a mess around in there and try it. What I do is change a setting then try to do what I want to do, if it doesn't work change that setting back to the way it was and move on to the next one.

It's been a long while since I did anything on XP or Win 7 so I'm sorry but I cant be more specific than that.

[camper6]

O.K. So now it boots up without the CD so it's coming from the HDD. New problem.  Cant't connect to the internet.  Says I'm connected but not able to connect to the internet.  Old equipment doesn't always work in machines or humans.

It might be that the windows security is blocking your browser. Go to Control Panel and then find the firewall settings Camper. Have a mess around in there and try it. What I do is change a setting then try to do what I want to do, if it doesn't work change that setting back to the way it was and move on to the next one.

It's been a long while since I did anything on XP or Win 7 so I'm sorry but I cant be more specific than that.

Thank you for all your help.  It does tell me I'm connected and firewalled so I'll fool around with that.  I'm learning a heck of a lot though now and I can help others. 

[Dave]

Another possible way you can test if it's the firewall blocking it Camper is to temporarily disable the firewall and see if you go online. If you do then you know it's because of that, if it doesn't then see if you can download another browser from another machine onto a flash drive and try to install it that way.

There are such things as portable apps, the link below is for Firefox portable browser 

http://www.filefactory.com/file/5xrbxzoo4fqu/FirefoxPortable_35.0_English.paf.exe

I have downloaded it and the uploaded it to my online storage area, so all you need to do is click on the link from someone else's machine on to a flash drive then run it on yours

It is an old version of the browser Camper so should work fine on XP

[camper6]

I just discovered that the copy of the install I had for XP is just SP2.  The one on my tower is SP3 so I must have made that disc when the updates to SP3 were not installed.  That's the one I'm trying to use on my laptop so that could be the problem I can't acess the internet.  Thanks for the interest.  Is there any way I can copy the XP version I have on my Acer tower that includes the SP3 and do another install?  I read up on how to do it but it's confusing at times and I don't want to screw up what I already have.
I prefer using a CD instead of a flash drive because the laptop seems to be able to read it.  I'll try the portable browser but I don't think that's the problem.  It's something to do whit the TCIP not being accessed when I try a repair.