You can get a complete reinstallation guide at www.support.dell.com - Home and Home Office - Product Support - Reinstall Guide.

I think he just wants to prep the laptop to sell it.

 

If that's the case, just pop in the Windows XP CD and turn on your laptop.  Access the BIOS so you can boot from the CD first before your hard drive.

 

Then go through the onscreen procedures to format (do a quick format) and install Windows.  Then install any necessary Dell drivers.  By "necessary", I mean drivers for the chipset, video, audio, PC card, modem, network, etc.

 

You don't need to install Dell Quickset or backup/restore software or drivers that are already loaded by Windows.

 

Tim

Hiya,

 

I think I have the same problem here... I have already tried to format the hard drive but it hasn't worked properly. I have an Inspiron 2650, bought in November 2002, and have tried a few times to format my hard drive, usually after accidentally installing Gator software or unwanted adware or spyware. I put the reinstallation CD into the drive and reinstall everything from scratch.... however, my old user profiles/documents/folders still remain on my computer: I can see them when I look through Windows Explorer.

 

How do I get rid of these; I want my computer to be restored to how it was when it was delivered to me!! Is Norton Recovery any good? Can anyone recommend anything else? I don't want to start deleting things myself as I'm not sure what is important, and I don't want to void the warranty or anything. I still have all my reinstallation and software CDs... can anyone advise me?

 

Thanks in advance... Sarah

The steps are described in detail on the link that I posted earlier. In short:

Put the Windows XP CD and shut down the system.

Restart and immediately start tapping F12. (If that doesn't give you any options, try Esc)

Boot from the CD and let the setup begin.

On Welcome to setup press Enter and then agree to licence by F8.

Then press Esc to install a fresh copy.

Then choose the partition to install (Generally C:) and press Enter and press C if prompted.

(If you want to be double sure, delete all partitions and proceed once you have only Unpartitioned space)

Choose to Format the partition using NTFS file system (Not quick)

Once format is done follow the prompts and complete the installation.

This will remove everything from the hard drive.