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June 17th, 2012 12:00
Windows XP won't reformat partitions
Trying a re-installation on neice's Dell Dimension 1100/B110....she could not find disks that came with if any so I had a Win XP Home Edition disk for my desktop I bought about the same time.....thought if we could at least get the OS on we could either download the drivers to my system and put them on a flash drive and transfer to hers or contact Dell to see about replacement disks....she never did a system backup so were really at a loss where to start, nor did she do any disks, O/S or otherwise.....start system says could not find disk....checked boot sequence it is set to boot from hard drive but never goes beyond this point....am assuming the HD has issues and may need replaced but I'm no expert and have had no training.....I have however re-installed Windows XP on about 20 systems now and never had a problem....today changed system to boot from CD drive...inserted my copy of Win XP and restarted....went through same old up to reformat....under regular format it did nothing....under quick format it went to 20% then to me it could not format the partition.....Service Tag for her system is <ADMIN NOTE :Service tag removed per privacy policy> don't know if that will help at all but was hoping someone could give me a clue where to go next....she is currently unemployed and can't afford to do much as far as a new system or major professional repairs but needs a computer for resumes and job applications.....any consideration would be greatly appreciated....
Jack Wilton
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DELL-Rahul T
13 Posts
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June 17th, 2012 17:00
Hi wiltons,
Welcome to the Dell Community.
From what you have mentioned, the hard drive looks to have gone bad. The format happens on the hard drive and if that is not going through, the hard drive could be at fault.
Since you have also expressed your niece’s inability to invest in a new hard drive right now, you can try to debug the hard drive. This will completely remove all the partitions on the hard drive and might just let you install windows on it. The steps to do the debug are in the link below.
http://tinyurl.com/2bnub
Note: You would need to boot from the Dell Drivers and Utilities Resource CD. You can use the one that came with your system.
Feel free to reply back in case of further queries.
DELL-Rahul T
Social Outreach Professional
Philip_Yip
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16.1K Posts
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June 18th, 2012 02:00
On your system, please download this file here and burn it to a blank CD using the free imgburn. Once burnt put it in your daughters system.
Power down the system and press F12 when booting up, select boot from cd/dvd and run the diagnostics with any extended tests.
If these pass then wipe the drive with DBAN and reinstall with a more up to date Dell Windows XP Home with Service Pack 3 CD.
To make a more up to date reinstallation CD with Service Pack 3 follow my wiki here.
To make a DBAN CD and reinstall Windows XP follow my wiki here.