Reinstalling OS on an Inspiron 8200

Many Dell's have a Recovery Partiition (a FAT partition) on the hard drive.  Some have a Diagnostic Partition and some have both - depends on the age of the PC.

If yours has the Recovery Partition, it's accessed by CTRL/F11 at initial boot and that will allow you to completely reinstall back to the original factory condition (and not require any CD's). 

The "C" partition on your hard drive is where you would reinstall and you select the option to format the hard drive (C) first before reinstalling. 

HERE is the Dell reinstallation instructions.

Do not delete the other two partitions on the hard drive.

Thnaks very much.

I did check the cntl-F11 but it seems my 8 year old 8200 doesn't have that feature.

I'm using my CD and boot from it, get a screen for R-repair or Enter-new copy of windows. I select Enter-new copy. It checks for other OS and finds XP Pro. Another R-repair option or ESC for new copy. I select ESC for new copy. It then takes me to the screen where I see the FAT partition, C: partition and an small unpartitioned part. I select C but I see no option to reformat. Only, Delete partition, Add partition or continue with new copy. New copy then says there's another OS there and the OS MAY not function properly.

Thanbks again John@

THIS SITE has instructions on how to reformat the "C" partition before reinstalling.

Thank you again Fireberd

I thought I had it. Everything was ging according to the instruction on "THIS SITE". Then Set-up did not ask me for my Product Key. But it did continue with all the step after so I figured it recognized that I was reinstalling on the same computer, who knows.

Then th ereboot atarted and the Windows splash screen.

Then when the Display setting screen is suppose to appear i get an image of colours all broken up, a corrupt file i suppose. Nowhere to click next, really can't make out anything. It stays that way with music playing.

So I powered down and the system booted up except that I had a split screen (same image on top and bottom). I couldn't find anything in Display Setting to fix it.

So I tried anopther OS clean install with the same result.

Looks like it might work if I could get rid of the split screen.

Any other ideas would be appreciated.

John@

Thanks Fireberd for your help. All is now well. There must be a corrupt file in the setup disk but it didn't affect XP and i guess this version doesn't require the Product Code.

The split screen issue was solved by fully updating the drivers for the Gforce 4 440.

Thanks again.