Reformatting my computer...Please Help?

Question

I am trying to reformat my Dell Laptop.. Everytime I stick the XP cd in it takes me to my Welcome screen..I have tried F2, F10, DEL (all options people on yahoo answers have given).. None of those options take me to the reboot screen... I have tried almost everything and I still can not reformat my laptop...What should I do now???

Answer 1

when you put the cd in restart the the computer now does the computer say boot from cd rom on start up? if so just tape the enter key if not then at the bottom of the screen look for setup it will say F10 or some other key then your go into the bios from there you have to find the boot up screen then reset the `1stboot to boot from cd rom to reset that tape the page down key then tap esc key and f10 then then computer will restart and auto boot off the windows cd from there then you just tape enter and the computer will be format and then reset up windows

Answer 2

To boot from the XP CD on a Dell, you should be able to use F12 to enter the Boot Screen, or F2 to enter the Bios. Both options need to be done when you see the Dell splash screen (before the Windows XP splash screen comes up)

If you use F2, then you will need to set the boot order to start with a CD. Then just load the CD and restart you computer.

Hope that helps

Answer 3

Starting the Dell Reinstalling CD
Before you start the reformatting, print this page. Then perform the following steps:

Restart the system. If the F12 = Boot Menu option appears on the screen, use the following:

Press the key to enter the one time boot menu.
Insert the reinstallingCD into the CD-ROM drive.
In the Boot Device Menu select the option for the IDE CD-ROM Device.
The Dell reinstalling CD will boot to a menu allowing you to boot from the CD-ROM or the Hard Drive. Choose to boot from the CD-ROM.
After the CD-ROM run, it will ask u to push any key to reboot from the CD-ROM. On the reinstalling menu it will ask u if u want to install new fresh windows XP or u just want to repair your windows XP. Select the option to install new fresh windows XP by push the button . It will show u the license agreement.Just push the button to accept the license agreement.After that it will ask u if u still want to repair your windows XP,push don't repair. The screen will show u which partition u wanna format, choose (C:) and push.
After that it will appear which system do u want to use, choose"Format your system using the NTFS file" and push . After that just push the button to Continue. Finally push the button to format your computer....After finish all the process it will reboot by it self.......And after that u can customize your computer......

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Answer 4

go into the bios when the computer first starts the screen will say to enter bios press "blank" whatever it is on your pc then select the boot order so the cd rom drive is before the hard drive then it will look at the cd rom before just starting with the hard drive

Answer 5

you need to get into bios and boot from cdrom, hope ya got the dell xp cd or yur gonna have trouble, dell has their own special drivers