Reformating Old Laptop

[sayaprayer]

I just got an old Dell Inspiron notebook and it currently has XP home edition. I've been wanting to reformat it but when I put my XP CD in... I don't get the "To Boot From CD Press Any Key" when first starting the laptop. I made sure the boot order the CD drive is first and still get nothing. Is there any other way I can wipe everything clean and reinstall windows? Or any fix maybe to my problem?

 

[WorldIndustries]

Might be a certain key you have to press at boot to select the boot device you want? I have to do that with my Thinkpad.

 

[SYL\X/3K]

When u press the ppower button press F8 i believe to go to boot menu, or u can go to BIOS and change the Boot devices there.

 

[sayaprayer]

Ya I changed the boot devices so the CD drive boots first. But I still get no message.

 

[Nitestick]

start pressing random keys at boot. it's likely that one of them will bring up a menu asking you which of your bootable devices you would like to boot from. select the cd-drive