Laptop Misery

[Wagara]

I need some expert advice please! I have a Dell Inspiron 3500 laptop. I have to upgrade the PC to W2K for a user to take home and connect thru modem to the internet. Originally, it had W98 installed. The laptop also had Novell installed and I didn't delete this beforehand since I didn't thnk it was necessary. (We don't have the laptop's network cable so I can't connect it to our network.)

Apparently I installed the server part of the software rather than the regular part. My problem is that everytime I boot the laptop, I'm getting the Novel login screen (after the ctl-alt-del prompt) and I have no way of connecting it to the network so I can't sign in. (I don't have the user's password either since he's long gone.)

I can't use a prompt to reload the correct version of the software and the Novell prompt just takes me in a loop because I can't sign on.

Any ideas?
Thanks in advance!

[nunob]

Reload Windows 2000. Go into the BIOS make sure the sys. is set to boot to cd stick the windows 2000 disk in and follow the on screen instructions. Make sure you erase all of the old stuff. If however you need data off of the machine then you can try to run the repair console when you boot with the 2000 disk.

[NooNoo]

Oh boy what a mess. Try booting to repair console and using this (http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=222444) to remove novell... no guarantees though.