Dummy ......Is the partition that shows up the same size as the hard drive or substantialy smaller?
BTW ..you can get a win98x boot disk at bootdisk.com

dl65

Sir I have not been installing drivers and know very little about DOS what I have learned was reading and MOSTLY just typing help as for doing a CLEAN install HP will not allow it or I'm not doing it right I have 6 floppies from microsoft and it will always stop on the 4th disk with an error. when I do a system restore the C:\I386|drvapps.log and several others will say they are not recoverable when I retry it will take them but what I have learned from dealing in the registry it always has alot of keys that should not be there.Funny thing is for instance if I look at defrag right after I do a restore it shows 2 partitions for C: when I format D and clear the partition it still shows 2 for a little while and then becomes 1 I know it does not make sense but neither does alot of things with this computer. I downloaded a program from Systimarials on the desktop last night and later it disappered in thin airDummy ....do you have the 25 character M/S product key code ? It should be on a sticker mounted on the outside of the case somewhere .

dl65 Yes SirDummy ....LOL .....you can dispense with the sir ......LOL
Ok then do you know anyone that you can borrow a original copy of M/S Win XP from and then do a proper clean innstall using that original disk and your product code .

dl65 LOL Sir is a habit from the south and I have already searched the neighborhood either they don't have ONE or don't want to loan it out. I'm fairly "new" "old" here I was born here but recently moved back. I am really fustrated with this but am not ready to give up I still believe I lost control of the mouse and had to reboot I strongly suspect the problem is in the progams in DOS simply from the past experience with doing system restores.Boot Boot Bus Extender 1 ACPI Microsoft ACPI Driver
Boot Boot Bus Extender 2 PCI PCI Bus Driver
Boot Boot Bus Extender 3 isapnp PnP ISA/EISA Bus Driver
Boot System Bus Extender 4 IntelIde
Boot System Bus Extender 8 MountMgr
Boot System Bus Extender 9 Ftdisk Volume Manager Driver
Boot System Bus Extender 5 PartMgr
Boot System Bus Extender n/a* VolSnap
Boot SCSI miniport 25 atapi Standard IDE/ESDI Hard Disk Controller
Boot SCSI Class 2 Disk Disk Driver
Boot Base 1 KSecDD
Boot NDIS Wrapper n/a* NDIS NDIS System Driver
Boot PnP Filter* 4* agp440 Intel AGP Bus Filter
Boot Network* 2* Mup Mup
Boot PnP Filter* 6* nv_agp NVIDIA NFORCE AGP Bus Filter
Boot PnP Filter* 3* SISAGP SiS AGP Filter
Boot PnP Filter* 5* viaagp1 VIA AGP Filter
System System Bus Extender 14 lbrtfdc
System Primary disk 4 Sfloppy
System SCSI Class 45* i2omgmt
System SCSI CDROM Class 1 AFS2K AFS2k
System SCSI CDROM Class 2 Cdrom CD-ROM Driver
System Filter 5 Changer
System Filter 6 Cdaudio
System Boot file system n/a* Fs_Rec
System Base 1 Null
System Base 2 Beep
System Keyboard Port 4 i8042prt i8042 Keyboard and PS/2 Mouse Port Driver
System Pointer Class 1 Mouclass Mouse Class Driver
System Keyboard Class 1 Kbdclass Keyboard Class Driver
System Video Save 1 VgaSave
System Video Save n/a* mnmdd
System Video Save n/a* RDPCDD
System File system n/a* Msfs
System File system n/a* Npfs
System Streams Drivers 1 RasAcd Remote Access Auto Connection Driver
System PNP_TDI 4 IPSec IPSEC driver
System PNP_TDI 3 Tcpip TCP/IP Protocol Driver
System PNP_TDI 5 NetBT NetBT
System NetBIOSGroup 1 NetBIOS NetBIOS Interface
System Extended base 1 Serial Serial port driver
System Extended Base 3 Processor Processor Driver
System Extended Base 5 AmdK7 AMD K7 Processor Driver
System PCI Configuration 1* PCIDump
System n/a* n/a* Fips
System Pnp Filter* 2* Imapi CD-Burning Filter Driver
System Network* 5* MRxSmb MRXSMB
System Network* 4* Rdbss Rdbss
System Pnp Filter* 1* redbook Digital CD Audio Playback Filter Driver
System n/a* n/a* SiSkp
System n/a* n/a* TermDD Terminal Device Driver
Automatic Event log n/a* Eventlog Event Log
Automatic COM Infrastructure n/a* RpcSs Remote Procedure Call (RPC)
Automatic UIGroup n/a* Themes Themes
Automatic LocalValidation n/a* SamSs Security Accounts Manager
Automatic PlugPlay n/a* PlugPlay Plug and Play
Automatic TDI n/a* AFD AFD Networking Support Environment
Automatic TDI n/a* Dhcp DHCP Client
Automatic TDI n/a* Dnscache DNS Client
Automatic TDI n/a* LmHosts TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper
Automatic TDI n/a* WZCSVC Wireless Zero Configuration
Automatic ShellSvcGroup n/a* ShellHWDetection Shell Hardware Detection
Automatic SchedulerGroup n/a* Schedule Task Scheduler
Automatic SpoolerGroup n/a* Spooler Print Spooler
Automatic AudioGroup n/a* AudioSrv Windows Audio
Automatic NetworkProvider n/a* lanmanworkstation Workstation
Automatic NetworkProvider n/a* WebClient WebClient
Automatic Extended base 2 ParVdm
Automatic n/a* n/a* Browser Computer Browser
Automatic n/a* n/a* CryptSvc Cryptographic Services
Automatic n/a* n/a* ERSvc Error Reporting Service
Automatic n/a* n/a* helpsvc Help and Support
Automatic n/a* n/a* lanmanserver Server
Automatic n/a* n/a* NVSvc NVIDIA Driver Helper Service
Automatic n/a* n/a* PolicyAgent IPSEC Services
Automatic n/a* n/a* ProtectedStorage Protected Storage
Automatic n/a* n/a* seclogon Secondary Logon
Automatic Network* n/a* SENS System Event Notification
Automatic n/a* n/a* srservice System Restore Service
Automatic n/a* n/a* TrkWks Distributed Link Tracking Client
Automatic n/a* n/a* uploadmgr Upload Manager
Automatic * n/a* W32Time Windows Time
Automatic n/a* n/a* winmgmt Windows Management Instrumentation
Automatic n/a* n/a* wuauserv Automatic Updates
This is a program called load order from Sysinternals Freeware shows want is loaded at boot in which order don't know just thought it might help.