Re installing XP on Sony

[Scott Stevens]

On Thu, 3 Mar 2005 16:55:26 -0600
"Jim Isbell, W5JAI" <jim.isbell at gmail.com> wrote:

> I have a Sony Vio laptop and it has one partition on it, one 4 gig and
>  1 gig of unassigned space.  (was assigned as drive "D" but I
> unassigned it thinking I could add it to "C"...of course, I couldnt)
> Windows XP is installed on the 4 gig partition and the remaining 1 gig
> is un assigned.
> 
> BUT...no mater what I do when it boots it has Sony Vio logos and if I
> look at the directorys I find a bunch of crap that was left over from
> the days when it was running a Sony derivitave of Win ME. Lots of ISP
> advertisements desquised as optional ways to connect to the internet. 
> (I use a Sprint cell phone and Sprint software to connect to the
> internet and dont need ANY ISP or phone line methods of connection and
> would love to get some more space by deleting them.   I cannot delete
> the directorys because they are protected.  If I could just erase the
> unused directorys I would be happy but also just cleaning the whole
> thing off and installing XP would be fine to since there is nothing on
> that drive that I need. I cannot delete IE and that takes up a bunch
> of room.  I use Netscape and IE is an abomination I need to be rid of.
> 
> I want to clean that damned thing completely off and reinstall XP. 
> The version of XP that I have is the Home edition UPGRADE.
> 
> I dont know what I need to put on there first to get the upgrade to
> work but I have ME Upgrade and WIn 98 and WIn 3.1.  Usually just
> starting from 3.1 and upgrading step by step works but I cant get this
> damned Sony crap off the HD and it takes up over 2 gb of HD space.
> 
> Any help would be appreciated, even if it is to tell me that Sony
> fixed it so their crap must stay, at least then I would quit trying to
> recover the lost space.
> -- 

I would try 'clobbering' the hard drive entirely by installing NetBSD or
a Linux OS on the machine.  Tell it to 'take the whole drive' and it'll
probably clobber that Microsoft stuff rigorously.

Then, at your option, you can install XP on it (wince).

You'll probably have to install the Windows 98 to get the 'Upgrade' to
work.  

But now I am talking about icky things.

Why not install something on-topic?  It might be a nice Minix machine. 
Or 386BSD is old enough now.