I have a compaq presario 5000 pentium 3 with 256 mb ram. It formerly had windows ME on it. I used my gateway xp installl disk on it. I wiped out Me and began installing Xp on it. It got to the point where it told me to reboot and remove disk. It would then only boot to a black screen with a gray bar across the bottom of the screen and then freeze. I tried the windows me reccovery disk i got from compaq but obviously i already wiped out me so no o.s. will boot now. I am left with an empty box that won't do anything. Can anyone help?

Hi adamussg,

Welcome to CompuForums! Thanks for becoming a valued member of our community. We're here to help you for free, so I hope that you can help us by exploring the rest of the forum, posting in some of the other threads and adding yourself to our member map.

Legally, you do not have permission to use the Gateway recovery disk on any computer other than the one it was supplied with. As we do not discuss illegal activity here we cannot provide assistance unless you are using software which is subject to licensing restrictions that prevent it being used on the computer it was supplied with.

We can however tell you where you can download free alternatives to Windows which are not subject to this licensing restriction and even order free disks which you may use. We can also provide information on how to wipe your hard disk to prepare it for an OS installation.

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also if you download a version of linux (i suggest ubuntu) then install it you should be able to dual boot into your "new" version of win XP that you are going to buy and install. what it sounds like is that you have erased the MBR (master boot record) making you not able to boot into the "new" bought version of windows xp that you are going to buy. if you do that then you can use the "new" cd (after you are able to boot into windows xp) to erase linux and the dual boot system so you can have a normal computer again.

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Operating System: XP modified (vista/media center/profesional/corprate edition)
Manufacturer:ME - RAM:4 gig - Hard Drive:1.5 TB
CPU:intel extreme core 3.4 ghz
Graphics/Video: dual 8800gt geforce 768 meg