Why Dell is different from other computers companies?!

 Hi viola girl,

 

    You can still format your laptop hard drive without a windows xp cd. if your laptop is say less than 2 years old simply press ctrl+F11 on start up. i.e when you see the dell logo. this should take you a screen which says pc restore select restore. this would clean up, reinstall windows as well as all drivers. This should take around ten min only viola. Same done from a windows xp cd will take around one hour.

 

 see this for more info

. http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/dsn/en/document?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&dn=1090151

Yes, call Customer Service and send them the $15 or so they will ask you for.

 

This has been discussed hundreds of times recently.

!!!

 

you confused me now!! I can't do the Dell™ PC Restore because of the change in Dell policy?!

No Viola

 

 You shold be able to do it. If you cant do it, then call dell tech support.

http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/dsn/en/document?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&dn=1090151
http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/index.htm


Systems shipped after July 15, 2004 came with Symantec PC Restore. This utility restores the computer to an "as-shipped" condition. If you haven't reformatted, repartitioned, or otherwise modified the master boot record, it should work.

If the Symantec PC Restore utility won't work, but still resides on your computer, a Dell customer has figured out some ways to get it to work again. Note - If you removed this partition, it is not recoverable, cannot be downloaded from the internet, and cannot be shipped from Dell. Click here for ways to fix Symantec PC Restore. Users have also reported that the partition can be restored with Ghost 2003, and Ghost 9 using the '03 capabilities of it. If you boot to the Ghost 9 CD, select Advanced Recovery Taks, select Utilities, then Restore Legacy Image it should work - but you want to verify the image before attempting the restore. It's in a folder called IMG.

Systems that shipped beginning in early 2005 ship without Windows XP. You can contact Dell and request a CD and wait for it to ship, see Contact Us at the bottom of the page. And you'd need the other CDs from Dell or you can't reinstall that particular piece of software.

I am so glad I bought my XPS in May of 2004. It came with the Reinstallation CD.

 

The only downside: I have no justifiable reason to replace it. This boat anchor works as good as the first day I turned it on. I only need to blow out the built-in HVAC system and heat sinks every 8 months or so. The bugger is even running the Vista Beta 2 with no problems at all. It just won't die. *mega bummer*  Maybe it was one of the last really well built notebooks :)