q: why am I in the wrong job?

a: because I hate computers! They're OK when they work, in fact they're great when the work - it's just that I seem to have the knack of persuading them not to work.

Thought I could speed up my aging old frenemy by re-formatting my system hard drive and installing an actual legitimate copy of XP I've had for ages. Easy enough one might think. But no, obviously not as I'm writing this. Problem 1: Scratch on legit CD copy of XP and / or corrupt files from the (legit) download. Problem 2: Some confusion over hard drives (possibly wiping all data on storage hard drive - I don't know at the moment) so re-installing old WinME from PCs recovery disk would not work. Probably some other problem too as removing storage disk does not help as WinME recovery disk now cannot find any hard drive to install itself onto. Problem 3: Borrowed WinXP disk simply goes round in circles, believing that there is an OS already installed on the HD that it's just itself re-partitioned and re-formatted (about 4 times I think I went round this loop).

Solutions? Answers on a postcard would be v. much appreciated.

:0(

[update] Repartitioned system hd using dodgy XP disk for the nth time, made a small 5GB FAT32 partition and left the rest unformated. Tried old WinME recovery disk that came with the 'puter and it finally worked! next step: try and install a version of XP, probably have to do it over WinME which is NOT what I wanted to do; part of the main objective was to get XP running on NTFS rather than FAT32 but never mind.

:oS