problem with Asus eee PC 901 XP

[ringochris]

Hi,

I hope someone can help me. I currently have my friends netbook which he purchased secondhand from ebay. He knows less than I do, so I said I would try to fix his problem...

When he first received the netbook, it seemed to be working fine. Then, what I think has happened is he has switched the machine off as it was doing some kind of update. Now when you start up the machine, it seems to get stuck on a screen that says 'configuring updates'. He said he has left the machine on for literally hours, but this screen doesn't go away. Then I noticed that it says Vista Home Edition. I'm sure this machine should be running XP! I think the previous owner must have somehow installed Vista on it. I would like to get the machine back to XP, but no disks or instructions were supplied when he bought it off ebay.

I have tried various things to get it to boot up normally without getting the configuring updates screen it gets stuck on, including pressing F8 and going into safe mode etc. is there something I can do from there, such as going to a DOS prompt and restoring? Or perhaps it is possible to connect to an external cd drive and put in a copy of XP, and entering the product kep printed on the bottom of the machine?

Any help or advice to get this machine running again would be gratefully received. He is as sick as a parrot!

Many thanks, Chris

[Alan2273]

You could have problems here.

What was originally installed, as some were shipped with Linux and a recovery CD.

If yours was originally shipped with XP, connect up the CD/DVD USB drive with the XP CD in, then switch the machine on and keep pressing the ESC button, that will bring up the boot menu then select the USB drive and press enter, and away you go.