Dell XP Reinstallation Cd question.

theultimatekcchiefsfan · 01-09-2005, 12:37 AM

My friend has a Dell Computer thats around a year old. He had it pretty messed up with viruses and such. After failing to remove all of them and the system being all around screwy we decided to pop in the reinstall cd and reformat. At least that is what I thought would happen. I had used an HP cd on a 98 machine one time that did the same thing. It reformatted then reinstalled windows and all worked great.

Well I tried the same thing on this machine and when we were done I installed virus scan and immediately it popped up with a virus. Well i was amazed and soon began to investigate. I found directories that had not been removed and user profiles that were still installed.
Anyway it turned out that the disk only installed windows xp over the corrupt version and DID NOT REFORMAT FIRST.

Well this sucks...................

I want to reformat it first and then reinstall XP so everything will be new again. Did I miss something here or are these new XP reinstall disks not capeable of performing the reformat also. I dont see the advantage of not including this feature on the disk.

If this is not possible, can I reformat from scratch and then reinsert the installation cd to reinstall. Or will this not work due to the fact that some neccesary data for the reinstall may have been removed with the reformat.

If anybody has instructions or has done this procedure please advise.

Thanks UKCF

01-09-2005, 12:37 AM	Topic Starter
theultimatekcchiefsfan I am currently playing this Join Date: Aug 2000 Location: Arrowhead,USA Casino cash: $10006258	Dell XP Reinstallation Cd question. My friend has a Dell Computer thats around a year old. He had it pretty messed up with viruses and such. After failing to remove all of them and the system being all around screwy we decided to pop in the reinstall cd and reformat. At least that is what I thought would happen. I had used an HP cd on a 98 machine one time that did the same thing. It reformatted then reinstalled windows and all worked great. Well I tried the same thing on this machine and when we were done I installed virus scan and immediately it popped up with a virus. Well i was amazed and soon began to investigate. I found directories that had not been removed and user profiles that were still installed. Anyway it turned out that the disk only installed windows xp over the corrupt version and DID NOT REFORMAT FIRST. Well this sucks................... I want to reformat it first and then reinstall XP so everything will be new again. Did I miss something here or are these new XP reinstall disks not capeable of performing the reformat also. I dont see the advantage of not including this feature on the disk. If this is not possible, can I reformat from scratch and then reinsert the installation cd to reinstall. Or will this not work due to the fact that some neccesary data for the reinstall may have been removed with the reformat. If anybody has instructions or has done this procedure please advise. Thanks UKCF
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