Wow, you are terrific! I'm sorry I should have said that I have XP Media Edition, which is pro as you know. It's an HP Pavilion a1430n, dual AMD CPU, 3800 + 1.80 GHz, pretty fast, 250 GB hard drive came installed, capacity 4 GB ram, I have 3 installed, 2 identical 1 GB, and the 1 GB that came with in 2- 512 KBs. I bought it in 2006, so it's old news by today's standards, but it works for me.
I really appreciate all your help, you are very kind to have taken the time to send me all the instructions I could possibly need! I will do this after work over the weekend, and let you know how it worked out, which I'm sure will be fine, because you even gave me the free software to help. The hard drive still has 232 GB available, and I am looking forward to having this thing running well again. Thank you so much, I can't wait to get started.
Cindy