EKleissen,

Are you following all the steps described here?

Hi Denny,

I indeed followed all steps as described, however the Windows XP CDRom did not startup. On this forum I also read the actions for complete "clean" installation. Here they used the following sequence out of DOS window:

debug {enter}
-F 220 L1000 0{enter}
-A CS: 100 (ENTER)
xxxx:0100 MOV AX,301 (ENTER)
xxxx:0103 MOV BX,200 (ENTER)
xxxx:0106 MOV CX,1 (ENTER)
xxxx:0109 MOV DX,80 (ENTER) --"80" for hd1, "81" for hd2
xxxx:010C INT 13 (ENTER)
xxxx:010E INT 20 (ENTER)
xxxx:0110 (ENTER) i ---BLANK LINE "VERY IMPORTANT"
-G (ENTER)

Program terminated normally

Hi Denny,

Thanks for the tip. I indeed followed all steps as described, however the Windows XP CDRom did not startup. On this forum I also read the actions for complete "clean" installation. Here they used the following sequence out of DOS window:

debug {enter}
-F 220 L1000 0{enter}
-A CS: 100 (ENTER)
xxxx:0100 MOV AX,301 (ENTER)
xxxx:0103 MOV BX,200 (ENTER)
xxxx:0106 MOV CX,1 (ENTER)
xxxx:0109 MOV DX,80 (ENTER) --"80" for hd1, "81" for hd2
xxxx:010C INT 13 (ENTER)
xxxx:010E INT 20 (ENTER)
xxxx:0110 (ENTER) i ---BLANK LINE "VERY IMPORTANT"
-G (ENTER)

Program terminated normally

I lost all my partitions, but the Windows XP CDRom could start normally as from here. For me it would be interesting to know why XP is not able to install on disk that already has information on it...

EKleissen,

Windows XP can install on a disk that has information on it. A low-level format, which is what you performed, is very rarely required and I'd be surprised that a Dell tech had you do it if I hadn't read some of the other things Dell techs have recommended recently.

If you have your CD-ROM drive set as the first boot device in BIOS, when you restart the computer with the XP Reinstallation CD in the drive you should see the "Press any key to boot from CD..." message appear briefly on the screen. It is only there for a few seconds, so you must be prepared to press a key quickly.

In the event your system has two optical drives, you may have success in entering the setup program by placing the CD in the drive other than the one which you have been using.