Folks, I've given up. My plan to copy all of the files over from a different machine and burn them to a DVD backup has worked. I've got the owner's documents, photos and pst files. Now I'll try to install Win7 on a freshly formatted disk. I'd like to reset the BIOS but it just doesn't seem to have any kind of "safe default" option or similar, maybe I'll just pull the battery out for a few minutes.
I guess 5 years is a long time in dog years for a computer, so upgrading Windows is probably a good thing (it makes me feel better to think that anyway). Greg
