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And your only alternative is to reinstall ME all from scratch. Or you could always try a form of Linux and treat it as an educational thing now, at least that way it won't cost you too much.

Your mistake was to install all those patches together as there obviously was at least one that had to be installed seperatly if not more. Generally it is a good idea to believe what the System tells you rather than think you know better particuarly when you can't recover from a disater.

Now for the questions

1 Is there a Sticker on the case that says something about ME and has a Product Key?

2 Did you buy this privatly or from some type of shop?

3 What does your son want thsi for?

The attempt to use Nortons has done more damage than what you originally had ifs that's posible. When you get any form of error message in Norton's in the DOS mode never proceed further ever. I know easy to say now but at least it was a good lesson.

ME was never the most stable platform anyway that's probably why 98 SE continued to be sold long after ME disapeared off the scene.

Now if there is a sticker on the chassis there was an OEM version of ME installed which means that the software was licenced to that hardware and not to the user, if you bought it through some kind of shop and they haven't supplied you with the Install CD and other OEM Software they have breached Microsoft's EULA and are lible for fines from MS the same applies if you bought it privately as well and if you can prove to MS that you are the victim here they just might replace the software {this however nowdays generally depends on some form of action against the seller.} Or you can go down the Pirate route and try secondhand shops for an OS and Software even Flea Markets or whatever will generally sell this stuff. But it is illegial as if you actually read the End User Licence Agreement from MS all you are buying is the right to use that software on one computer only and both the OS and software are licenced to the original hardware not the user and MS can request back the original disks at any time although I've never actually heard of this happening.

Without any install/recovery disks you really don't have any place to go legally anyway as even if you where to buy a copy of XP it in all likely hood wouldn't work on this hardware as there would probably be some compatibility issues and the CPU is too slow as well. But if you where to purchase a copy of XP Pro you could then insall any previous copy of any MS OS that you can lay your hands on. An expensive fix but at least it's legal.

ME is a puzzler to begin with -- I have a relative
who has reinstalled it 4 times on two years or
so on a HP he bought new. Still crashes. It
seems to me that the cheapest and best
solution would be to acquire a legal copy of
98SE on eBay -- it will run on your hardware
just fine and it is a lot more stable than ME. I
did just that on an IBM laptop and although
you do have to keep up with maintenance to
keep it running like new, all the techniques
and third party software are well developed
and work well -- stuff like Norton, which you
have (I agree about not using it for recovery
beyond a certain point, but it is good for
maintenance) X-Tech, SpyBot, and a lot of
others -- like I say, the field is well developed.
Linux is certainly an option, too, and I run
RedHat on an old desktop very successfully,
but it is going to take a little more involvement
than 98SE and maybe from your son's point of
view it would be better to stick with Windoze.

Personally, I think Bill should issue an
apology to every ME victim out there -- it just
fundamentally sucks.

Good luck!