DELL factory restore?

[consumertalks]

So here's the deal- I got a few DELLs when they had a sale, one for me, one for a friend. I accidentally turned on and started to use the wrong one (I'm a stingy bastard so I get the bigger hard drive and other goodies).

It's a DELL Dimension 2350 with Windows Xp.

Problem- I swapped the hard drives, so now my two days of internet history, LCD set up, and other user preferences (DELL setup menu like name, etc.) are stored on the HD. I don't want it to seem like I've giving him a used system, so how do I do a factory restore?

Solution- ??

[jkrohn]

The computer should have come with restore disks. They will probably be 1 or 2 CDRom's. Just pop those in and boot up your computer and they should be able to do the rest

Jkrohn

[SeanC]

If you didn't get restore CDs, contact Dell you should have.

Sean

[Steve R Jones]

Just tell him you tested it.

[hickory]

could you just go back to the first Restore Point and start over? not sure if this deletes internet history or not. or...... you could just reformat the harddrive and use the restore disks to rebuild the win xp setup.

[badusername]

I need to know how to reformat a hard drive if you can tell me how that would be great

[John Prophet]

Welcome to the forum!

usually to reformat a drive you get a boot floppy disk.

if you want to do fat32..like for windows 98se etc...you just get a w98 or ME floppy disk...boot up....at the a: prompt type in

"format c: /q"

The "q" means "quick" and if there is stuff on it now the "q" option does it a lot quicker. If nothing is on it you cant use "q" and you will just keep going and do an "unconditional" format.

(then afterward it asks for a "volume label" which is just a name if you want to name the drive...you can always name it or rename it late rin windows though)

If you want to do NTFS...like for Windows XP...just start the XP install and there will be a choice for it a few steps into the install.

JP

[badusername]

I have a dell dimesion4550 Xp home edition so what should i do

[John Prophet]

what do you want to do? if you want to reinstall windows from scratch you just..first off..save all of your data that you want to save..like emails and stuff.

Then you just boot off of the xp home cd..then you choose "install windows" and there will be other options etc....you just sort of wade thru that..like it might say there is already a windows install on that partition etc..you just keep going and then itll ask you if you want to delete the partition or reformat it etc..you choose reformat with NTFS..then it'll start the install.

That'll be the basics of it but then youll have to reinstall your applications form the 'applications" cd that usually comes with dells.

And maybe even before that you should do all the windows updates (not drivers though, just the critical updates)

Then go to dells website and see if you can get the latest drivers for all your stuff, like the motherboard drivers etc etc.

All you have to do is go to dells site and go to support and type in your "service tag" number. It should be on the side of your case somewhere...or in the bios also. Then you will see all the download options for your comp etc.

JP

[badusername]

thanks so much