Presario 1700 (17XL365) upgrade ignorance...

I have a Presario 1700 (17XL365) that came with ME. 2 partitions, C and D,
(D must be the restore)
ME stinks and I want to put XP Pro (or W2K) on this machine.
Right now the machine barely runs and I don't want to go spend $2000 on a
new one if I don't have to.
I have saved all my drivers using the MyDrivers utility I found on the web.

I really don't know how to go about this, I would like to wipe the hard
drive, but still have a couple partitions on it.

Anybody done things like this and could give me any advice, walkthrus, etc ?

I realize it probably isn't that tough, but I've never done this before and
I have a great deal of trepidation that I will do something that I can't get
out of. I really don't want to spend 3 days reading books/articles/etc.
telling me how to do this in theory, and it would take a week to track done
all this information before I felt comfortable with it.

I see the drives are fat32, if that makes any difference.

Thanks for any help and your indulgance.

Mike

Whatever you do, use XP (Pro or Home). Installing as OS older than your
hardware can get troublesome. XP has a vastly larger native driver database.
If you ever want to reinstall the original software image, leave the D:
partition alone.
HH

"Mike" wrote in message
...
I have a Presario 1700 (17XL365) that came with ME. 2 partitions, C and D,
(D must be the restore)
ME stinks and I want to put XP Pro (or W2K) on this machine.
Right now the machine barely runs and I don't want to go spend $2000 on a
new one if I don't have to.
I have saved all my drivers using the MyDrivers utility I found on the
web.

I really don't know how to go about this, I would like to wipe the hard
drive, but still have a couple partitions on it.

Anybody done things like this and could give me any advice, walkthrus, etc
?

I realize it probably isn't that tough, but I've never done this before
and
I have a great deal of trepidation that I will do something that I can't
get
out of. I really don't want to spend 3 days reading books/articles/etc.
telling me how to do this in theory, and it would take a week to track
done
all this information before I felt comfortable with it.

I see the drives are fat32, if that makes any difference.

Thanks for any help and your indulgance.

Mike