I installed a new HD on a HP Pavilion 8755c that ran Win ME on it. However I don't have a ME installation CD-Rom but only the ME recovery disc set that came with it. They won't work! Instead of having to pay $200 plus for a new Windows OS installation disc can I just buy a $27.00 Linux program like Linspire and reinstall? I've never used Linux and no absolutely nothing about it, however I can see that the price is signifigantly different! Also what about the program FreeSpire should I know? Is it an option for what I'm doing?
Thanks man you helped me out twice! You told me in another thread how to install Win-ME back on the PC that I just replaced a HD in. I wasn't able to get the ME recovery discs to work as I kept getting a message reading : " Error : The Hard Disk was not found! Recovery was aborted. If you have a hard disk installed, the cables may be loose or the disk may not be initialized. You may need to run the FDisk program to initialize the disk ..." In the post you said: "Make sure that you WD HDD is formatted to the FAT32 filesystem. Remember, WinME can't see a drive that has been formated to the NTFS system. Connect that drive back into another PC and format it to FAT32, then put it into the PC that you want to put WinME on." I didn't get your post on how to fix ME at the time but I did get the message about installing a free Linux program. I made an ISO of FreeSpire and installed it as my OS and it worked perfect. It was so easy! I had spent weeks trying to get ME reinstalled. Also I downloaded FreeSpire and Ubuntu both and I installed FreeSpire as it were the first DL to get done. Should I use Ubuntu instead or is there a difference? Anyway, here's the main question: I'm giving this old PC to my sister who only burns cd's and checks her mail. Should I go back and format the PC to FAT32 and install ME on it or leave it as is? Thanks again, you were a major help!
- just passing thru.. if that is indeed all that your sis will use the PC for, then i'd put some form of Linux on it, for cd burning there's the excellent 'k3b' program and numerous (stable) internet browsers etc etc ... however for you, 'supporting' the PC is the only question, ie if it breaks, would you be more comfortable resurrecting it if it has the (truly abysmal) Windows ME, or a flavour of Linux on it ?.. ..though it would still be worthwhile going the Linux route...
