Carol, if it was up to me, I'd do as you suggest and reinstall XP.  Several months back, when I was a rabid 98 supporter, I would have said the exact opposite, but now I've had time to get used to XP and tweak it around to suit my preferences, I wouldn't go back to 98.

If nothing else, XP will be more stable for these folk.  Although if it was interchangeable with 98, they must have had XPHome on a FAT32 partiton to begin with.  I think to get the full effect of XP's stability, the drive needs to be formatted in NTFS.

With a reinstall, this should be possible of course, as the option will be available if the install is done directly from a cold boot, ie with boot set from CD rather the floppy or HDD.

You should be prepared for quite a bit of work, however.  You may also have to add SP1a as well as a heap of other Windows updates, so it's not a quick job.

Ian Porter
Computer Guys Inc.
Arrowtown
New Zealand
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  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Carol 
  To: [log in to unmask] 
  Sent: Wednesday, September 03, 2003 12:07 PM
  Subject: [PCSOFT] Virus question


  Hello..
  I had a friend call me about a computer problem.  They're computer shuts
  down frequently with a message similar to the one that I've heard comes up
  when the system is infected with the Blaster virus.  This system came with
  windows XP however, their adult kids felt that for them windows 98 would be
  simpler for them so they downgraded to windows 98.  I've heard the the
  blaster virus doesn't affect windows 98 but because this system has been
  downgraded from XP I was wondering if it could still affect it.  I have no
  idea whether the hard drive was formatted and a clean stall of windows 98
  was preformed or not.  Aside from this problem, the system as a whole
  doesn't seem to work right.  She didn't say just what wasn't working right,
  just asked me if I would come over and try to get it working right.  Anyone
  have any thoughts or ideas?  My thought is to reinstall XP, restore it to
  factory settings.

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