System Re-formatting

Question

I am trying to put my dimension 8200 back to its original state by erasing the hard drive and reformating it... I have read that the only way to reformat is to put the windows XP disk in and boot from it then choose repair, however when i get to this stage i am asked for an administrators password which I am entering correct but it says it is not correct. Even when there is no password enabled it wont let me through. Is there another way to reformat my hard drive and then reinstall windows xp without all this trouble?

RoadiJeff · Answer

If you do a cold boot directly to the CD it should not ask you for a password.  See this guide for all the details.   Guide to Reinstalling Windows (Windows OS disc required)

rickmktg · Answer

crookedletterd wrote:
I am trying to put my dimension 8200 back to its original state by erasing the hard drive and reformating it...
I have read that the only way to reformat is to put the windows XP disk in and boot from it then choose repair, however when i get to this stage i am asked for an administrators password which I am entering correct but it says it is not correct. Even when there is no password enabled it wont let me through.

Is there another way to reformat my hard drive and then reinstall windows xp without all this trouble?

Wherever you read that, it's wrong. You do NOT choose repair if you want to format the drive... Choose INSTALL.

crookedletterd · Answer

Thanks, for some reason when i would just try to repair windows xp it asked for the admin password--but when i chose to install a new copy it finally let me.

Windows General

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