Can You please help once more. My laptop has crashed bigtime and I have to reinstall Windows XP. As there is no floppy drive in the laptop the only option I have is to put the Windows XP disc in the dvd drive and rely on the setup to invite me to format the hard drive. It does not happen, all that happens is is Windows XP wants to install a second Windows XP installation making two lots of Windows on the laptop. If I put the disc in again it invites me to install a third copy of Windows. I am at a loose end as to what to do in this situation. Can you please help.
Thank you
Ted

One way would be to go buy a USB floppy drive, then you can use your old, trusty Win98 boot disk.
If you have a computer with a floppy drive and a CD burner, you can make a bootable CD and put the floppy on it.
http://www.bootdisk.com/nero.htm
That explains how to do it using the nero program, but you can also use roxio to do the same thing.
By the way, if your Windows install disk isn't a full version, you may not want to format the hard drive. Make sure it isn't an upgrade disk.

Thank you very much. I am very grateful for your help. You do a marvelous job of helping all of us that do not understand enough. Thank you . Ted