Thanks chaps its ok,been across and started from scratch,now have xp successfully installed,however I cannot get his machine to connect to jis broadband via the ethernet socket,dont have the option of using usb,because the blueyonder disk defaults to ethernet,its a secondhand machine and I begin to suspect the ethernet facility is buggad,we managed to get in for about three minutes yesterday but no luck today,the machine cannot find the broadband modem,gonna take my puter across and try that.