I need help to reformat!

[RevCor632]

I have a Dell Dimension 4600 running Windows XP Home. I want to reformat and reinstall Windows. Everywhere I've looked on the internet says to put the brown Windows XP CD in the drive, turn on the power, and press F12 while on the Dell screen. Then go down to "IDE CD-ROM device" and press enter, so it boots from the CD drive. The problem is, even if I do that, it still boots normally.

My friend's dad is a computer repair/technician guy and he said to boot from the Dell ResourceCD, but as with earlier, it didn't work.

Then he said to try, while on the Dell screen, pressing Ctrl+F11 and it should take me to a screen where I can reformat. But if I press that on the Dell screen it beeps and says "Keyboard failure" and then takes me to a screen that says "We apologize for the inconvenience, but Windows did not start properly, this may have been caused by a recent hardware or software change" and asks me if I want to boot up in safe mode or normal.

Does anyone one know what the problem is or if I am doing something wrong?!?! Help....

 

[pc_boy]

your mobo is probably set to not boot from CD. When your computer starts, press DEL or F2 or whatever to enter your BIOS settings screeen and look around, check to see if your settings allow CD-rom boot. If that's fine, use a startup disk to enter DOS, and then do the setup command from there.

 

[RevCor632]

1. Once I'm in the BIOS settings, and if I go to Boot Sequence, it says this:
(checkmark) 1. IDE CD-ROM DEVICE
(checkmark) 2. DISKETTE
(checkmark) 3. HARD DISK DRIVE

How do I tell if it allows CD-ROM boot?

2. What is this "startup disk" you speak of?

 

[Osiris]

Just follow this:

How to format

 

[RevCor632]

Isn't that for Windows 98 and Me? I have XP. And the instructions say to choose between FAT16 and FAT32, but I want NTFS.

 

[Osiris]

Go ahead ahead and choose NTFS, quick format.

 

[RevCor632]

Shoot, if I click the link to download the Win98 boot disk it says "Not Found
The requested URL /littlebrother/downloads/boot98.exe was not found on this server."

 

[Osiris]

Try this:

Bootdisk

 

[RevCor632]

Ok I put the disk in, and restarted, and changed it so it boots from the Diskette Drive. Then it said "Non-system disk, strike any key and retry" or something, so I pressed Enter and it booted up normally. Nothing happened. Did I do somehting wrong?

 

[Osiris]

Just leave it on cd drive.....dont put your cd drive in..if you installed the bootdisk.exe properly to the floppy, it will automatically access your floppy even when it's set to boot from another drive.