I just purchased a used DELL PC from the salvage unit at my university. It looks like it has Windows NT and a lost/unknown administrator password.

I want to wipe everything and install XP or XP Home. I can buy some sort of XP upgrade CD through the university's staff purchase program:

Windows XP Pro SP2 Upgrade Personal Purchase ($55)

But I am not sure that this can do a full/clean install. Also what about drivers? When I had to reinstall Windows once on my DELL PC at home, I had to put in all kinds of drivers before I even got to installing Windows. I don't have any CDs or drivers for this machine?

What do I need to just start from scratch? I don't want to buy a several hundred dollar version Windows keeping in mind that for not too much more I can get a new machine from DELL with XP Home already installed.

Thanks

The install process in XP is significantly better than that of previous releases. Most drivers are included on the CD and whatever else you need can likely be downloaded from either Dell or the various parts manufacturer's web sites (i.e. LAN, Video, etc). I would start by finding the model number for your Dell and going to the dell site to see what drivers they have in their support section, download them and have them ready during the install process. If Dell doesn't have the drivers then find out what parts are inside it in particular the video and NIC/Modem/Sound (if you have them). You can also list your model number here and hopefully someone on this forum might have the same model and can offer more insight.

If you have a Win 98 CD handy you can install that first then simply buy an XP Upgrade CD. This is a valid XP upgrade path.

The XP Upgrade CD offers a clean install (reformats) as well as just an upgrade. I agree with Casey, that you should download the drivers and burn to CD first.

But first you should use the Upgrade Analyzer from Microsoft's site to see whether the hardware is capable of running XP. If its has Win 2000 on it, it probably is. If it has NT then it may not.

If you can't boot the machine because of the password issue, then I would put Win 98 on it first.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ScottGem

But first you should use the Upgrade Analyzer from Microsoft's site to see whether the hardware is capable of running XP.

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This is a great suggestion.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ScottGem

If you can't boot the machine because of the password issue, then I would put Win 98 on it first.

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You can also reset the Administrator password using one of these free tools:

http://www.loginrecovery.com/
http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/
http://www.openwall.com/john/

Ok, thanks. I will try to run with some of this.

I'll get the machine specs using the service tag. It is 1.3GHz, so it is not too old and should be XP compatible.

Burning a CD with the drivers and exactly when to use it in the install process is still a bit fuzzy. I'll ask again if I run into problems.

Thanks