The North Orange County Computer Club is helping The Gadgetress tackle the multitude of cries for help from readers. NOCCC group has experts in Windows, Word and all sorts of computer topics. The club, which meets monthly on various topics, has been in existence since 1976. Visit the club's site at noccc.org.)

___

Q. I need a way to remove Windows XP SP2 from one of my computers, since no built-in utility has been of help. Every time I reinstall the operating system, I unwittingly create another system. I have reached four of these. On an old ThinkPad R32, not only has this wasted a lot of useful space, but it has created conflicts as well.

I went to a renowned Web site where I found a discussion thread with a link to a small third-party utility that might have helped. Unfortunately, the built-in DVD/CD-ROM has provision only for music, graphic or mixed music-graphic options but none for data files when it comes to the Autoplay feature that is necessary for that third-party utility to work.

Therefore, I have not been able to use the software, and I am at square one with many OS "versions" on that skimpy little hard drive. I have not been successful at reformatting the hard drive either. Let me add that I do not have an external diskette drive, which I might have attempted.

How do I go about erasing the whole hard drive and installing a fresh version of XP under the circumstances? Is there any cheap program, shareware or freeware that might allow me to delete Windows entirely?

A. According to the IBM specification for your laptop, it should have a 24x CD; 8X DVD; 8X, 4X, 24X Max CD-RW/CD-RW-DVD (Combo) drive.

Data and program files on a CD should be accessible by clicking on "Start," and then "My Computer." You can also right-click on "Start," select "Explore," and click on the CD drive letter in the directory on the left.

The Ultimate Boot CD, which is a free download from ultimatebootcd.com, will solve your problem. It provides several tools for erasing your hard disk.

You can go to the UBCD site, download an image of their bootable disk and burn it to a CD-ROM. When you boot from that disk, it will give a menu of the 100-plus available utilities. Links on the UBCD site provide detailed descriptions of most of the programs.

Your ThinkPad R32 may be "old," but if you installed its maximum of 1,024 megabytes of RAM, it should still perform nicely. Bigger hard disk drives are currently quite reasonable. Driver downloads are still available from IBM.