Inspiron 2650 - help

Do you have a reinstallation CD for XP? If not what CD's did come with the system?

The computer came with the Dell disks and the original version of XP.    I tried going to setup and then setting it to load from the CD and then putting in the original version of XP that came with the computer.  But it does not want to start from the CD so I don't know how to do a restore to put it back like it was when I first got it from Dell.

 

Over a period of time, I had ugraded to Service Pak2 so when I started having problems, I could not reinstall the original version of XP.  I had been getting an error message for some time there was a problem with a driver.  I had just started using the program remove part of the control panel to remove all programs slowly as I was going to try to take the computer back tot he original version and reinstall.  But there were so many problems and it was slow.  When I started up before this last crash, the device driver showed no devices and now the computer opens up with the message about not starting correctly and asking about loading in safe mode, etc.  None of those work.  We get to the Windows Screen and then a blue screen comes on and is there so shortly, there is no time to read the screen.

 

Any ideas you have would be appreciated.

Ok, not sure I understood all that about running from the XP CD. But many people here talk of Dell using a ghost file to restore or reinstall. But I have to tell you I am sort of from the old school on this stuff and can easily do things the old way I suppose. If I were in your situation I would fdisk the drive, delete all partitions, then restart the computer with the XP OS installation CD in the drive. It should run and ask to partition the HD and then format the drive and then install windows. But you say you put the XP CD in the drive, boot the computer and it will not run the CD and get to any screen with options to do anything? Do you know how to get into bios setup? If so do you have the boot order set to CD drive first and then HD? Feel free to email me directly if you like. I have one contributor here that spends all his time pointing out to people trying to help that they are wrong and he never seems to help a person that ask for it. Reason I said this, sort of tired of offering free help when you have to deal with paid people doing this instead of helping someone that asked. I have done this for 13 years so if you like we can get it done.

Well great! I am glad I can help a little sometimes and you are quite welcome. I am glad you got it all up and running again. Thanks for letting me know.

 

dbramlet