You might remember me as the guy who recently asked "What's a
tablet?". I needed a machine to read pdf's away from my main desktop
(which runs Win2K). We came to the conclusion that a tablet would be
fine. So I got one off ebay, a Gateway M275, with the usual vague
comments about it running XP (no disks though). So I fire it up (also
needed a charger) and up comes the XP logo. Then it says that setup is
continuing (huh? 35 minutes to go!) and needs the SP2 cd to continue.
Please put it in the drive...blah...blah. Of course I don't have a SP2
cd. Now reading between the lines of the user guide there's supposed
to be a back-up copy of the O/S on another part of the hard drive...
Well, that's handy even if it doesn't include sp2, but there's no
information as to how to tell the machine "Don't continue with
installation of sp2; re-install regular XP from the back-up
partition." So I can do nothing except say close and then the machine
reboots again and we go through the same procedure all over
again...and again... and again... until finally I find the equivalent
of the "off" switch.

Reading the ever-popular Msoft web site about XP sp2 and the
clear-as-mud instructions on how to implement it, it seems that what I
might have is a combined original + sp2 installation that someone was
trying to install and then for some reason gave up. Even Msoft
wouldn't be so silly as to not revert to the original XP if the sp2
installation failed...or would it? Let's hope that that's not the case
and it's simply a problem of giving the monster what it asks for, i.e.
the SP2 disk.

That should be simple. Just download a massive file, de-rar or unzip
it and then write it to a CD. Put the CD in the tablet's drive when it
asks for it and then... it's party time! Not quite. After being told
that Msoft doesn't work with the likes of Firefox and so firing up my
virus-prone IE, I'm told to go to "windows update" and get sp2 for the
common peon. Well, "windows update" seems to think that it's going to
install sp2 directly on my machine...my Win2K machine!!! Or maybe
update my Win2K installation! Nowhere can I find anything which says
"Download a copy of the sp2 CD" or anything similar.

However if I pretend to be a knowledgeable person and go to the IT
professional update site I can download (which I have done) the file
WindowsXP-KB835935-SP2-ENU.exe, which would appear to be SP2 but on
further reading of the instructions it looks like this is an
installation disk. If I were to execute it it would attempt to install
SP2 on the machine I'm using (i.e. a Win2K machine). I don't see how
to just get it to write out all the files to somewhere on my HD so I
can create a CD. It could be that the execution would result in an
error "You're trying to install SP2 on a non-XP machine. Would you
prefer to write the SP2 files to a directory instead? ... Browse..."
but that might be too much to hope for. In a worse case scenario it
would trash my O/S. Hopefully no one's that stupid!

So what am I missing? Short of ordering (and paying for) the CD from
Msoft what can I do to download and create it?

Presuming that I can somehow (following your instructions) end up with
a bunch of files that represent SP2, how do I get them in the required
format (I hear nasty rumors about something called "ISO" which
apparently Burning Studio (my CD/DVD software) can create) (I also
hear nasty rumors about "cabinet files" but hopefully anything I get
from Msoft will already be in "cabinet" format).

TIA

As the machine boots from off, try various function keys, F2 and F8 are
popular, that may take you to a special restore screen. This is usually a
special partition that will restore the machine to factory fresh install. If
you get through that, I expect there will be an option in the programs to
make backup CDs/DVDs...Do that.

Other option is to contact the device OEM for restore disks.

--
Sven
MVP Mobile Devices
<KnuckleHead@BadISP.gov> wrote in message
news:phqfv35b2l9ka37csk0sn9f8us9qkgdt4v@4ax.com...
> You might remember me as the guy who recently asked "What's a
> tablet?". I needed a machine to read pdf's away from my main desktop
> (which runs Win2K). We came to the conclusion that a tablet would be
> fine. So I got one off ebay, a Gateway M275, with the usual vague
> comments about it running XP (no disks though). So I fire it up (also
> needed a charger) and up comes the XP logo. Then it says that setup is
> continuing (huh? 35 minutes to go!) and needs the SP2 cd to continue.
> Please put it in the drive...blah...blah. Of course I don't have a SP2
> cd. Now reading between the lines of the user guide there's supposed
> to be a back-up copy of the O/S on another part of the hard drive...
> Well, that's handy even if it doesn't include sp2, but there's no
> information as to how to tell the machine "Don't continue with
> installation of sp2; re-install regular XP from the back-up
> partition." So I can do nothing except say close and then the machine
> reboots again and we go through the same procedure all over
> again...and again... and again... until finally I find the equivalent
> of the "off" switch.
>
> Reading the ever-popular Msoft web site about XP sp2 and the
> clear-as-mud instructions on how to implement it, it seems that what I
> might have is a combined original + sp2 installation that someone was
> trying to install and then for some reason gave up. Even Msoft
> wouldn't be so silly as to not revert to the original XP if the sp2
> installation failed...or would it? Let's hope that that's not the case
> and it's simply a problem of giving the monster what it asks for, i.e.
> the SP2 disk.
>
> That should be simple. Just download a massive file, de-rar or unzip
> it and then write it to a CD. Put the CD in the tablet's drive when it
> asks for it and then... it's party time! Not quite. After being told
> that Msoft doesn't work with the likes of Firefox and so firing up my
> virus-prone IE, I'm told to go to "windows update" and get sp2 for the
> common peon. Well, "windows update" seems to think that it's going to
> install sp2 directly on my machine...my Win2K machine!!! Or maybe
> update my Win2K installation! Nowhere can I find anything which says
> "Download a copy of the sp2 CD" or anything similar.
>
> However if I pretend to be a knowledgeable person and go to the IT
> professional update site I can download (which I have done) the file
> WindowsXP-KB835935-SP2-ENU.exe, which would appear to be SP2 but on
> further reading of the instructions it looks like this is an
> installation disk. If I were to execute it it would attempt to install
> SP2 on the machine I'm using (i.e. a Win2K machine). I don't see how
> to just get it to write out all the files to somewhere on my HD so I
> can create a CD. It could be that the execution would result in an
> error "You're trying to install SP2 on a non-XP machine. Would you
> prefer to write the SP2 files to a directory instead? ... Browse..."
> but that might be too much to hope for. In a worse case scenario it
> would trash my O/S. Hopefully no one's that stupid!
>
> So what am I missing? Short of ordering (and paying for) the CD from
> Msoft what can I do to download and create it?
>
> Presuming that I can somehow (following your instructions) end up with
> a bunch of files that represent SP2, how do I get them in the required
> format (I hear nasty rumors about something called "ISO" which
> apparently Burning Studio (my CD/DVD software) can create) (I also
> hear nasty rumors about "cabinet files" but hopefully anything I get
> from Msoft will already be in "cabinet" format).
>
> TIA