OK I seriously messed up....I wanted my older programs to work on my laptop which came equiped with Vista....I wanted XP. So I have an XP update disk and it wouldn't let me install it. So I wiped my laptop and now I can't install the XP update disk...it says I need the Full Version.....Please tell me I don't have to spend more money to fix this??Microsoft has killed us with this. Unfortunately to my knowledge, you must install a prior version in order to upgrade to XP. Now, if you happen to know someone with an XP or XPSP1, you may be able to upgrade to SP2 if that's what your upgrade disk is.There is a WORKAROUND for this if you have a floppy drive.

Download SMARTDRV.exe and put it on a windows98 startup disk

Boot to the 98 disk and run the SMARTDRV.exe

Switch to your cd drive "D:"

Navigate to the I386 directory

Run WINNT32.exe

This should run a fresh install reguardless of Upgrade.Thank you so much....However, I don't have a floppy drive on the laptop. Could I use a USB, or a CD? How did you wipe out your computer?There are ways to make flash drives bootable, but it's a real pain. I do know you can download a windows 98 Boot disk as a .img file which is like the floppy disk version of an ISO. Using a program such as PowerISO, you can convert that IMG to an ISO and burn it to a CD. I've never TRIED this and don't really know if it would work, but it's certainly worth a try.get a external floppy drive they are cheap
one thing is you need a legicy USB biosQuote from: JJ 3000 on August 20, 2009, 08:35:49 PM

How did you wipe out your computer?