WAY OT: Can anyone tell me how to reinstall Windows XP on a Dell 4300?
 

Well, my (fairly new) comp. is letting go this evening, and I can't get the Dell people...please help!

I'd get the computer to boot off the cd ( with xp disk installed) and then re-install windows. If its a dell, it may have XP already on a partitioned area of your hard drive. if so , it eill likely give you a hit f6 to enter setup or rescue of some sort.

You may lose files on your disk, so I hope you have backed up anything important!

Do you want to reformat the hard drive?

Have you tried system restore?

What particular problems are you having?

If you want to reinstall windows, just put the Windows CD in the hard drive and let the CD boot the computer. Then follow the instructions.

If you give us more details, I am sure we can all help.

Some versions of the Dell laptops have a CD and some have a CD and a boot disk. Look into your stuff that you got with the laptop and see which one they sent you.

Usually its a bootable CD and you can do as Reg suggested, otherwise you may have to put a floppy in the drive along with the CD and reboot.

Dell has the best product support in the business. Cannot understand that they are not helping you with this. I used to work with them (and my current company works with them now)and they stress that if a customer is not being taken care of, move them up the line and I would ask for a supervisor.

Joe

Thanks
 

Yes, I booted it from a CD first and after it had finished copying the files to the hard drive, then I just let it go and it completed the installation. Back online, as you can see. Thanks for your help. ;)

If you want to do it right, partition the hard drive into at least two drives. Then store your documents and such on the "D" drive and when and if the OS pukes you can still format or restore the OS and hopefully keep your data.

Joe

Don't know if they still do this on XP machines, but Dell used to put a hidden batch file in the root called "zztop.bat". If you ran zztop from the command line, it brought back an original factory configuration from other hidden image files.

Sounds like you are back in business though.