Gordon said:
Yes, boot from the CD, format the drive and then abort the install.
No, you can install ANY operating system you like (other than MAC) - it's
YOUR computer......
Yeah, but....
If you install Win98, for example, it very likely won't support your
peripherals as well as WinXP does. Some of them it might not support
at all. Also, if you have a dual-core CPU, I don't think Win98 has a
clue what that is, so it probably won't support both cores properly.
XP Pro can handle a dual-processor computer, Win98 can't.
Linux would do many of these things better than Win98. So no, you
don't have to reinstall WinXP, but you want to think hard about what
OS you do install.