Glad it worked out without major expenses, but this comment on the original question in case anyone else has a similar situation: a while back, I bought a Dell with Windows ME installed - which was already known to be a piece of crap OS - with the promise of an XP upgrade as soon as it came out. I got the upgrade disk and it installed with no problems. However, when I later had to reinstall the OS, I had to install ME, install a program to write XP over it, install XP, and then download all the the zillion or so updates. Times have changed, of course, but I don't think I'd buy another PC with an OS upgrade "coming" unless I knew that the upgrade was a stand-alone product.