well said flooby!!!

follow flooby's advise. it'll work!

Message Edited by marco27 on 10-06-2003 05:24 AM

The Windows XP CD will allow you to delete and recreate or format the existing partition.  Boot to the CD, and you'll shortly arrive at the screen which shows the current partitions and allows you to "Delete the selected parition" (see step #5 in the link below).  You can delete it and recreate it, or just format the existing partition, and reinstall on that.

http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windowsxp_sg_clean.asp

Once you've reinstalled Windows, you'll need to reinstall the drivers and applications, starting with (and this is important) the chipset drivers.  Make sure you get those on first thing after the OS.  You should also detach all peripherals except the keyboard, mouse and monitor prior to reinstalling Windows.

This page will detail reinstalling the drivers, utilities and applications:

http://support.dell.com/SoftwareReinstallGuide/Results.aspx?CatID=0&OSID=47&SysID=DIM_PNT_CEL_2350&_ctl72.x=32&_ctl72.y=9

Just follow the steps in the order in which they appear, except for the "System Base - USB 2.0 Controller driver," which I would install immediately following the chipset, video and audio drivers, rather than after everything else is installed.

for the chipset, its gonna be the Dell Dimension Resource CD for installing Drivers and Utilities.

yup! that is the one!

good luck!

please visit this site for more info on software installation guide and other concerns. http://premiersupport.dell.com/us/en/home.asp

Message Edited by marco27 on 10-06-2003 10:58 AM

Thanks Marco27, I have that disc-Drivers and Utilities. . It says device drivers, diagnostics and utilities, and computer documentation. Guess this is the one.

What disc do you find the chipset drivers on?

I saw your post about the chipset driver and had a question.  My son has an Inspiron 4150, P4 1.7 - about a year old.  He's in college and, needless to say, the HD is cluttered and the syetm is getting slow.  His system came with XP Home - if he does a clean install does he need to load the chipset driver also?  The reason I'm asking is I did a clean install of XP for my neighbor a while ago and I don't remember doing that.  XP found all the hardware, loaded all the drivers (I re-did the HP printer driver). 

Thanks for any help.

The I4150 would require reinstallation of chipset drivers, as per the instructions in the Reinstall Guide listings for that model at the link below.

http://support.dell.com/SoftwareReinstallGuide/Results.aspx?CatID=0&OSID=47&SysID=INS_PNT_P4N_4150&_ctl69.x=30&_ctl69.y=12

The specific link for the I4150 chipset driver installation is:

http://support.dell.com/us/en/kb/document.asp?DN=1070607

You may need to be logged into Support under the Service Tag for the system, in order to view these pages properly.

Beatrice57.

Yes, the chipset driver will have to be reinstalled in the Inspiron 4150, see the following article

http://premiersupport.dell.com/us/en/kb/document.asp?nav=Knowledge_Base&DN=RG1070607

Bev.

That's the reason I don't make it a habit to recommend Thurrott's site often.  Since most of the folks asking for help here with clean installs don't perform this task often, I think it's important to offer as much information on the complete job as possible, and in that regard, Dell's reinstall guides have the edge.  While the Thurrott site has very good directions for the "installing Windows" portion of the process, there's a lot more to it than that.  On the other hand, Dell's OS reinstall guides sometimes lack information and visual aids that would make it easier for some people, so it helps to consider the Thurrott site, if it's a question regarding strictly the OS.