PC Restore

loconellsbells,

Thank you for using the Dell Community Forum

If you have ever formatted the harddrive or used any partitioning software then the restore partition will no longer work and you will need to reinstall Windows manually.

Thanx for your reply.

The weird part is, Ive never done anything like that before. Any ideas how this could have happened wihtout my knowing?

To reinstall windows manually, do I put the XP CD in and reboot the pc? 

Will reinstalling wndows manually wipe my hard drive? As this is what i want to do.

I reinstalled windows once years ago on another pc and i ended up with 2 lots of windows on my pc, i dont want this to happen again.

Thanx so much for your help.

loconellsbells,

Boot to the Windows disk and choose the option to format the drive. Once it is formatted you can the reinstal Windows.

Hi loconellsbells

Click here for the step-by step procedure if using PC Restore (if it still works?)

If procedure defaults to Vista OS & you use XP, then click on “change the Operating System”

It’s the F8 key if you have Vista, otherwise Ctrl & F11 key combination if you have XP

If PC Restore utility doesn’t work then:

Click here for the step-by step procedure for doing a Clean Install (Manual Reinstall)

If procedure defaults to Vista OS & you use XP, then click on “change the Operating System”

Read Dell Support step-by step procedures carefully

Thanx for all your replies everyone.

Im going to do the clean install first thing tomorrow morning.

I have a Dell CD with XP on it, so this works the same as an XP CD? Ill be given the option to do a clean install when i reboot from this disk?

Its called Operating System, Reinstallation CD.

Thanx for all your replies everyone. Im going to do the clean install first thing tomorrow morning. I have a Dell CD with XP on it, so this works the same as an XP CD? Ill be given the option to do a clean install when i reboot from this disk? Its called Operating System, Reinstallation CD.

Yes, that's the one.  And you probably have another Dell CD with drivers on it. (If not, you can download the drivers for your computer model from Dell's Support site.)