I have two machines, a Toshiba laptop and a Dell PC. Both are running on Windows XP. The problem is with the Dell. It was used by innocents and now has some problems. I would like to erase everything and start over. The thing is, I would like to use the disks that came with the laptop so I can have Word rather than WordPerfect and other perqs that were included with the Toshiba. Can this be done? I'd hate to do all the work and find I have to reinstall the Dell software package. Just copying my files will be an immense performance. If I had a professional (preferred) do this, about what should I expect to pay?

Hi Mary Ellen,

Restore disks are created for the specific machines they come with. I doubt that you could use the Toshiba's disks with the Dell machine unless the disks are specific software packages, such as if you had a disk for MS Word that came with the Toshiba.

As for the price of doing this type of work, I would suggest that you contact a place like CompUSA and see what they would charge. Is the Dell still under warranty?

Stores sometimes sell educational versions of Office at a lower price than the full version of the program. I know that the CompUSA in my area does. These versions aren't able to be upgraded to the next version of the software, but they work well otherwise.

Good Luck with your machine!

Best,

Susan Gross

Thanks Susan...as I suspected.
Mary Ellen

Susan is right but I think you might be able to use your Word to load to PC or maybe not . WinXP is built so that no one can share software. The programs for one PC can not be used for another PC. Thank you Bill Gates. Earlier versions of windows can.