Date: 05/17/05 (Computer Help)    Keywords: no keywords

Hey guys.. I've been reading in this community for awhile. First time post.. any help is greatly appreciated.

My boyfriend thinks he's some sort of computer guru, but really he knows just enough to get himself into trouble. After reading reviews about Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005, he decided that it'd be awesome to have on our desktop. Here are the specs:

Dell Dimension 3000
Intel P4 2.80 Ghz
512 MB DDR RAM
80 GB IDE HD
NVidia GeForce 5500 (I think)
Windows XP Home Edition SP2 (that is, until it got all screwed up)

So... he had one of the OEM discs for Media Center Edition, and then tried to install it onto our computer as an upgrade. He told me there was some error after awhile saying "Cannot display this video mode," apparently because our little 15" monitor sucks. Then he decided it'd be best to just switch back to XP.

So after hard booting out of the Media Center setup a few times, he booted from a Home Edition CD, then reinstalled XP Home Edition. Unfortunately he left the original Home Edition completely installed, and did nothing in the way of reformatting or partitioning the hard drive.

Now when the system boots up, it goes to the new installation of XP, which has none of our normal settings, programs, files, or even drivers. I've tried going into the boot sequence to change it back to the old one.. system restore does not have any restore points saved.. and our poor computer seems to be stuck with two versions of XP. Which is insane.

At this point I'm considering just buying a new hard drive (I've been wanting a bigger one anyway) and starting fresh from scratch.. then possibly formatting this one and using it with an external USB enclosure for extra storage. Is that the only solution?

Thank you so much for reading this, and thanks in advance for your advice.

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/computer_help/398301.html