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How to Wipe Hard Disk and Start All Over

post #1 of 11
11/8/04 at 10:33pm
Thread Starter 
Are there any step-by-step instructions for formatting the hard drive, reinstlling Windows XP and re-installing application software. I would like to get rid of all the junk Dell installed on my 8600. Thanks.
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post #2 of 11
11/8/04 at 10:40pm
Try www.blackviper.com


lozx
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post #3 of 11
11/8/04 at 10:45pm
well, the biggest thing with a lot of OS disks nowadays is a lot of them are restore disks and what not. I have heard Dell's are different ( OS Disk with a little bit of stuff in them )

In reality if you can get your hands on a windows XP OEM Install disk anywhere ( I happened to have one from building another PC ) then you can just install that and use the product ID sticker on your machine for a CD key.

You may be able to do it with a regular Windows XP disk, but I dont have one to test that with.

It may not be much of a help, and unfortunatly I wouldnt see Microsoft too happy if I made a torrent of the disk. But, if you know someone who has the CD, your all good from there. Then you just install drivers and enjoy your clean install.
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post #4 of 11
11/8/04 at 10:50pm
Put in your purple Dell disc, and press F12 to go to the boot menu. Boot from the CD-ROM, and delete your current partition. Then re-install Windows on the blank partition with NTFS. Go through everything and let Windows XP install. This whole process should take 45 - 60 minutes to complete.
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post #5 of 11
11/9/04 at 12:54am

You are shipped a regular OEM copy of Windows with your 8600 (it is not a restore disk or anything equally annoying). You will be able to reformat and perform a clean install by following the advice of the previous posters.

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post #6 of 11
11/9/04 at 11:21am
if some of those step by step instructions are too technical, you can try sandman78's method (apparently it's so easy you can do it in your sleep): http://notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=49169
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post #7 of 11
11/9/04 at 6:04pm
The thing is there were 3 partitions on my new dell the big main one, a hidden 5 gig, and a hidden 39mb, so to get ALL my drive space back and combine the hidden 5 gig with my 35 gig simply....
1. Make a bootable cd in Nero with fdisk on it
2. Start laptop with cd in it pressing f12 to boot from cd
3. Type in 'fdisk'
4. Select delete non dos partition (do it to both the large ones, you can keep the 39 mb partition)
5. Select create primary partition
6. Restart with your XP disc in holding f12 to boot from cd
7. Select format NTFS fast and install windows
8. After installing windows, use driver disk and reinstall the drivers it says you need

Done..
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post #8 of 11
11/9/04 at 6:10pm
You can also just delete the partitions with the windows cd which will then report them as 'unpartitioned space.' Which you can then partition as you see fit.

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post #9 of 11
11/9/04 at 8:15pm
i have a ~50 mb eisa partition which i guessing is the dell tools. But i also have some wierd 4 gig fat32 partition that doesnt show up. What is it for?
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post #10 of 11
11/11/04 at 10:23am
Quote:
Originally Posted by mal
if some of those step by step instructions are too technical, you can try sandman78's method (apparently it's so easy you can do it in your sleep): http://notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=49169
Mal, I couldn't figure out why compfan03 PM"d me saying that he'd heard I had some very good/easy setup instructions, and wondered if I would share them with him. Now I see why he was confused. LOL
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post #11 of 11
11/11/04 at 10:47am
dont worry, reformatting is cake.
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