New to forum. I was visited by family including a ten-year old grandson. I activated an old PC running Win XP Pro for them. It worked for a few days until they began to install Google Chrome and Windows Live stuff. The installs did not go well and the system hung. I decided to delete some of the recent stuff from the control panel/ uninstall programs.
The Chrome uninstall gave a message that Chrome had been unistalled and Internet explorer was active again. On rebooting in safe mode I could not start IE. after a brief flash, the screen went to the desktop. I tried to use system restore (start/all programs/accessories/ system tools/ system restore) but again there is a minimal reaction, but the screen goes to desktop.
For three consecutive days, three technicians from PC Services of my ISP tried conventional remedies and took over the PC from their end. The keyboard stopped working when trying to enter the admin password. On the third day, they could not maintain a connection with my PC.
I decided to reinstall XP Pro from the original CD. After deleting the first 50gb partition and formating it, XP began to install and accepted the 25 character code. After rebooting, a message requested loading files from the original XP Pro SP1 CD. I do not have this CD, though I have the SP2 CD.
Q: where can I download the SP1 or purchase the CD for this and SP3?
I purchased Dell laptop with Win 7 Pro last year and established a virtual X86 machine on it. Could that be helpful?
I have worked with PCs since single sided floppies had DOS 1.0 OS (96kb including the game Hammurabbi!) but this propblem has me stymied
Please help!