reformatting without a floppy drive - no dos boot disk

Question

hello folks, happy new year.   i have been trying to reformat my inspiron 8600.  i contacted tech support, and they told me to create a dos boot disk and run debug, then fdisk.  however, the link they provided to make a boot disk requires me to have a floppy drive... which i don't.    does anyone know how i can make an msdos boot disk cd?  or is there some other way to wipe out my system without a boot disk?  i would really appreciate some guidance.  thanks a lot. jake

IWANNAREFORMAT · Answer

WOW,

baywolf, you are a quick one!!

i wish you hadn't responded, though, because just after i posted this i looked at some past posts about the same thing (you must get tired of answering this question, huh ;-)

i saw a post you made a little while back about the same topic, and followed the instructions on pauls website, and it went "slicker than mule mucus" as my uncle lenny used to say. xp makes it real easy, but what actually made it possible was your knowledge. my computer is good as new and it went very quickly. thanks so much

i had hoped that i could get back here and call off my cry for help before you put your time towards explaining it again. doh! anyways, i got it done, thanks for the insight. you are an excellent resource for us computer illiterates!

unfortunately for you, i now know who to come crying to when i have questions.

thanks again.

have fun,

jake

ps - i feel like i owe you one. if you ever need any handblown glass get in touch, i'll give you a hot deal.

Bay Wolf · Answer

I am assuming that you have Windows XP. If that is the case, then you do not need to make a bootable floppy disk to reformat your hard drive. You can use the WinXP CD itself.

Boot from the WinXP setup disk. When it gets to the point of asking which partition you want to install WinXP, you can delete the partitions at that point. Then you can recreate the partions and format the partition that you are installing WinXP to. Then proceed with the setup. Once you are done installing WinXP, if you created more than one partition, you will have to format it within Windows itself.

Here are some guides for installing WinXP

For a clean install of WinXP, visit Paul Thurrott's site for a well written step by step procedure.
Black Viper's web site also has some good step by step procedures - WinXP Home or WinXP Pro

Just as a note, you may have a hidden 3 or 4 GB partition. It depends on when your notebook shipped. If you do, this is the restore partition that Dell has set up. If you do anything with the MBR, it will render this unusable. It really doesn't seem to matter because you are looking to install it Fresh.

Here is some other information on the Restore Partition.

How Do I Use the Dell™ PC Restore by Symantec Utility?
What can Cause the Dell PC Restore by Symantec® Image to be Unusable?
Does Dell PC Restore by Symantec® use Hard Drive Space?

Bay Wolf · Answer

Well, at least I'm happy that you were able to get your computer up and running.  I'm glad that I could be of help to you.   You may also want to check out my web site:  http://www.bay-wolf.com.   It has a lot of good useful tips on Dell notebooks.       You have a Happy New Year.

Storage, Drives & Media

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