[buymeabmw]

hi there. wondering if anyone can help me. I have a dell dimensions pc (bought around 2003/2004 maybe) that has viruses in it and is generally a pain to work. I tried reformatting it last night using the windows xp installation cd but to no avail. i inserted the disk, restarted, using f11 to get to menu. After choosing the c drive option, the next page gives me the only option of selecting 'profile 1' after which the pc starts up as normal and i cant do anything? i have changed the bios to make pc boot from disk but to be honest i am going round in circles and am totally confused as to what to do. any help would be very much appreciated.

Many thanks,

A.

[Advertisements]

i have changed the bios to make pc boot from disk

If you did and you saved changes, shortly after reboot (with the CD in), you should see the following:
Press any key to boot from CD
Do you see the above message?

[Broni]

i have changed the bios to make pc boot from disk

If you did and you saved changes, shortly after reboot (with the CD in), you should see the following:
Press any key to boot from CD
Do you see the above message?

[buymeabmw]

hi.

no didnt see this message at all the dell 'help' pages said that after bios has been changed to restart computer and that boot message should display somewhere but I didnt see it. hope im using the right cd though. its the windows reinstallation cd.

thanks,

A.

[Broni]

Go back to BIOS and see, if you saved your settings and the CD drive is listed first.
If that checks out, try Windows CD on another computer and see, if it's bootable.

[buymeabmw]

hi,

ok ive just double checked and the bios boot sequence is as follows:
IDE Cdrom device
diskette drive
hard disk drive C

does that seem right? i will try putting the cd in my laptop to see if it responds.

thanks.

[Broni]

Boot order looks correct.

[buymeabmw]

okay so just to confirm: to check the bootable-ness of the cd i need to fix my bios settings on laptop then restart with the disk inside, use f12 (toshiba laptop) and see if the boot message comes up? or is there something else i need to do to initiate the boot message??

thanks!

[Broni]

I believe, that's the Toshiba case.

[buymeabmw]

hi, just tried the cd in my laptop and it seems to be working fine. the boot up menu came up as soon as f11 was pressed and it started rebooting. no idea why it wont work on the dell pc tho

thanks

[Broni]

On Dell, you shouldn't be pressing anything.
The message should be coming up by itself.
Was CD drive working before?

[buymeabmw]

yeah cd drive works fine. if i go into my computer and click on the cd rom the windows menu of the cd comes up fine. hmmm ok i'll try not pressing anything and see wat happens. thanks.

[buymeabmw]

finally managed to reboot using the cd!!! but now its asking me stuff about partitions?? theres a partition there already but its saying not to use that cos there is already an operating system on that partition. its asking if i want to delete the partition too. help!

thanks!!

[Broni]

Very good
Assuming, you want to perform clean Windows installation, you don't care about your data, or you have your data backed up, follow nice manual from here: http://www.michaelst...nxpinstall.html

If the above is goal, generally speaking, yes, you remove Windows partition, you create new one, format it and install Windows.
You'll see more details at the above link.