| Posted by: Advance | |
| quote: |
adityamahesh said this in post #22 :
Hey Devildog, if you are certain you want to cleanwipe and reinstall everything again, go to your bios settings and change the loading options from A:, C:, D: to D:, A:, C:. Then restart your computer and insert your Windows XP setup CD again. Then the XP setup would startup and then you can choose to reformat the hard drive in one of the steps I think.
Here I am assuming that your A: is the floppy disk drive, C: is your local hard drive, and D: is your CD/DVD-Rom drive.
M.  |
How do you edit you bios settings?
Is that with the F8 on startup?
In previous times reformatting, I had just ran the windows CD from windows, that is bad?
Thanks in Advance,
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| Posted by: adityamahesh | | In most systems it is F8, but in some systems, like Toshiba for instance, it is the Esc key. You need to look up the manual for your system and check which one it is.
It needs to be pressed just when the system starts up though.
As for running the Windows CD from Windows, I don't think it is bad. I think you just need to choose the 'clean install' option. I told Devildog to do that to be on the safe side.
M. | | Reply To this Message
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| Posted by: adityamahesh | | I haven't used a Dell. Just look up in the manual. It should be there. Or on the Dell website.
M. | | Reply To this Message
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| Posted by: Larke2000 | |
| quote: |
Advance said this in post #7 :
How do you start your computer in MSDOS mode? |
if you just want to get to a command prompt to run fdisk or format then you'll have to use a boot floppy of some kind. if you have an old windows 98 boot disk (or access to a machine that can create one) you can use that. or you can check out: http://www.bootdisk.com/ for all sorts of boot disks that you can use.
[if your hard drive has been previously formatted in NTFS you won't be able to see it from one of these floppies. the easiest thing to do would be to use a windows 2000 (XP) cd and perform a clean install like it was mentioned in the first post.]
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| Posted by: Advance | | I tried, I wasn't able to find that option, I will provide screenshots if needed. | | Reply To this Message
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| Posted by: Marc Flemming | | More often than not (for the systems I've worked on) - F10, F1 or the Delete key get into the system BIOS. | | Reply To this Message
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| Posted by: schmiggens | | I think it's the delete key. That's what I had to use. I am getting ready for formatting mine next week. | | Reply To this Message
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| Posted by: Larke2000 | |
| quote: |
Advance said this in post #12 :
When you are in the bios, what do you do? |
in the BIOS you can change the boot order of your hard drive, cd-rom, and floppy. so that you can boot from your floppy or cd-rom before the computer attempts to load the OS from the hard drive. this will allow you to use a floppy or cd to format the hard drive or reinstall the OS or anything else you want to do.
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| Posted by: adityamahesh | | Just curious, but did you use the BIOS or did you just use the CD from within Windows itself?
M. | | Reply To this Message
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Technical Support Forum: Reformatting
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