usually reformatting the hard drive means it's completely wiped out...

At what stage of the install does it usually lock up?  Have you tried the full format and install route-- booting using the XP cd, and reformatting the hard drive and installing XP?  That usually cures a lot of sluggishness problems. 

You may have a faulty optical drive, you may have faulty RAM... please post more information so we can help. 

Hi, I have just had a hardisk failure, one thing I learnt through that experience ( thanks to various experienced forum members) is that the HDD and the Fixed Optical Drive share the same IDE bus, so one can affect the other and vice versa. As to whether it is a hardware problem you are experiencing I cannot say for sure, but the Dianostics is pretty stressful for a HDD, mine failed after 2mins 49secs into a 2 hour test. It gives it a major work out and like I said will hopefully rule in/out some issues

If you downlaod from Dell the diagnostics comes as a floopy package. It downloads to harddrive and from there unpacks to 5 floppies. Put floppy 1 into A drive and reboot machine and follow instructions.

Whymewhynot

I tried the full format and install route and this did not work.  In addition it won't allow me to do a full FAT32 format only a quick format.  It locks up after the XP logo screen and when I reboot it locks up on the scancheck screen.

Hi, don't know whether anybody else would agree but I would advise getting a copy of the Dell Diagnostic program ( in the download section for 8100) and boot from that. Then test all the various items of hardware, to at least try and rule them out. There are so many reasons why your symptoms may occur it is a good start to rule out the hardware.

regards whymewhynot

I reformatted 2 weeks ago and re-installed Windows and it seamed ok, but a little sluggish. Plus, it would come up to the Blue welcome screen and just stay there for like 30 min. after a reboot.  Other than that it was normal again. So, I continued using the computer and unfortunately lost my pictures this week when I was forced to re-format again because nothing would boot it up to windows (including using a Windows Me CD, Windows XP Home, XP Pro, and a couple different floppies) before I could access windows again.

I was able to use windows for 2 more days then it stopped working again when I re-booted. The firsat few days it would say it needed to check the disk. As long as I cancelled the checkdisk it would go to windows (although it paused for about 10 min at the black xp screen).  If I didn't cancel the checkdisk it would just lock there.  I knew something was wrong but not how to fix it.

I used Norton Utilities as well as anti-virus, and Adaware and found some errors, etc. (no viruses) but repairing them changed nothing.  Finally I got the dreaded Blue screen again and could no longer boot up windows. This time it said just one line however...system disk has failed.  I turned the computer off and back on because ctrl-alt-del didn't work. Once again I could not re-boot.

I formatted and partitioned once again and used Norton floppy disk scan/recovery. It found nothing and I ran it twice so I don't think it is a virus.  I was going to get a new hard drive but now I am concerned it is a system board problem. My cd drive stopped working when I was able to use Windows temporarily. This is the weirdest thing--I put an Audio cd in and then it worked again with the data cd's.

So, this last time I reformated and used the norton floppies I tried to install Windows and the cd was gone....I put an Audio cd in from boot floppy and then the computer say it and my cd worked to put in data windows cd again...very weird.

Please advise whether this is virus activity, or if I need a  hard drive or system board or what.  I need to have my computer back asap. Thanks

I agree with whymewhynot... the dell diagnostics CD is pretty useful.  Otherwise, if you can boot into windows, run scandisk on the hard drive to see if it is indeed a hard drive problem.. good luck! 

Ok starting in windows 95 is normal so nothing to worry about, as for the command line interpreter I do not know why it is asking for that. I downloaded the floppy version and did not get that response.

Whymewhynot

Ok I have the floppy set in front of me, it does have command com on it, if looking uder windows xp you may have to go into tools menu and cahnge settings to show system files. So basically when you boot from the floppy it should act like an old fashioned boot floppy, taking all its system files of the floppy. For some reason your system is not seeing the command.com on the floppy, so firstly you need to check it is there and the floppy is ok. This can be checked using the online computer.

Whymewhynot