No, just my reply to quips. I know about catching more bears with honey, when dealing with Corp droids (who may know better but must follow exact scripts - I never judge them stupid until an answer reveals such; have to deal with them in any case.) Please see my reply to Greg re recap.

Thus far it appears there's a BIOS upgrade to be done and, the M$-site instructions failed to list correct? expected directory for the I386 compressed files as, C:\\Windows\\Options\\I386. This may be the final glitch - and the remedy just may work next. WHY? the need for remedy with Dell - may or may not emerge.

Actually, from the first - the machine was plagued with instabilities - various kernel32 and other errors (she wrote down) and then.. the oft-reported Win-ME extreme slowdowns. There were errors made re other things she ordered. I omitted what seemed irrelevant to present situation, now using a new HD (and exchanged mobo). Among ongoing complaints: frequent crashes of an indispensable billing program; insufficient info to see a pattern in crash messages (where there were any, before lockup).

When I arrived on the scene, it was issuing a self-diagnostic on the HD, "I'm about to die" - somewhere I noted exact wording. That was enough for Dell to send a new one. Various other reports induced the Dell tech to send a new (refurb) motherboard too. Events with the W2K install attempts followed the sequence I described. My listing may be bare enough for you to grok, in the version after Greg's suggestion.


Thanks,

Ashton