Help restoring my cpu back to factory conditon

Question

I hope someone can help me. I have a Dell Demension C521 desktop. I am trying to restore it back to factory conditon. CTL and F11 does not work but when I put the Dell CD in that has the operating system on it, press F12, I get into where I can restore it. When I get to the part it asks me to select the following:

-Boot Menu Device> I select Onboard CD-Rom Drive>

- press any key to boot from cd>

-Goes to a blue screen and it goes through loading files windows setup>

-Brings me to a screen that gives me options:

>To set up Windows XP Now, press enter (tried this the first time and all it did was reinstall windows not the restore to original factory conditon I wanted)

>To repair a windows XP installation using Recovery Console, Press R

>To quit setup without installing windows XP, press F3

I tried the first one and it just reinstalled Windows XP, not a factory restore. I then tried doing the second choice by pressing R. Pressed R and got the following:

> 1: C:/windows

Which windows installation would you like to log into (to cancel, press Enter) I chose 1( enter)

It then says Type the Administration password. (There is no password on my computer). I tried playing around with it and enter in a number of things I can think of. I do not have a password for my computer. This is where I am stuck. Can anyone please help me!!

All I want to do is do a factory restore, (erase all files, photos as such from my computer. I do not need anything backed up.

Thanks for any help!

Short_Bus · Answer

It sounds like it's not giving you the opportunity to delete the existing hard drive partition and create a new one. One option you can try would be to download a hard drive erase tool that will completely wipe out all contents of the hard drive and then use the WinXP restore CD to reinstall it fresh.

One word of caution: The hard drive erase tool will erase all hard drives connected to the system so if you have multiple drives in your computer but only want to erase one of them, this might not be the right tool.

Download DBAN from http://downloads.sourceforge.net/dban/dban-beta.2007042900_i386.zip?download. This should download an ISO file which you will need to burn to CD to run. Once you've created the CD leave it in your drive, reboot your computer, and make sure you boot to the newly created CD. When DBAN loads, type "quick" (without the quotes) at the initial prompt to perform a quick wipe of the drive. NOTE: Depending on the size of the hard drive, this may still take a while as it will do a single-pass write over the entire drive to wipe out all data.

Once this completes, remove the DBAN CD and insert the Dell Restore CD and you should be able to load a fresh install of Windows.

ieee488 · Answer

http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/dsn/en/document?docid=347576

ieee488 · Answer

if there isn't a password, just hit Enter key

cdngirl2010 · Answer

Thank you for the links! I tried the first one and it did not work.

I had found the second link to those instructions to the second poster before and that is where I ran into some problems. It wants me to type in an administrative password and there is no password on my computer. Any suggestions?

cdngirl2010 · Answer

if there isn't a password, just hit Enter key

Yes I already tried that before I posted help on this site and it was a no go! Not sure why it is even asking for a password. I have restored it before a couple years ago and had no problems (although it was under warranty then and tech support walked me through the process)!! this is soooo frustrating!!! LOL..thanks so much for your help. So much appreciated!!!

cdngirl2010 · Answer

I went in and tried again and hit enter and I remember now where I got stuck. It did get me past the password but the next thing that pops up

C:/windows> (with a white box on the end)

I then hit enter and it just repeats C:/windows> (with a tiny white box on the end)

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Help restoring my cpu back to factory conditon

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