how to do a fresh install of windows xp without internal cd drive?

[aaron7114 10+ year member]

Alright I got a new laptop so I'm selling my old laptop to a friend this weekend. It is a dell inspiron 700m. There is hardly any space left on the hard drive and just for security reasons I want to completely start with a fresh copy of windows xp. I do have the windows xp cd however my cd drive on the laptop doesn't work. It tries to load a cd but I'm never able to open it so its basically useless.

Now I do have a external USB cd/dvd drive. I put my XP disc in it and installed what I thought was a fresh copy of windows xp but after I looked at my free space and seen that I only had a little over a GB of free space left I knew that I mostly likely now have two copies of windows xp on it.

So how can I erase everything off of the hard drive and start fresh with windows xp? I don't have any external hard drives or anything like that to hook it up to.

If I could just get the computer to recognize the USB cd drive at startup then I'm almost positive I could do it that way.

Any help is greatly appreciated because I need to get this done ASAP since my friend is buying it this weekend.

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[_DjScrew_ 5,000+ posts]

it should recognize the usb cd rom on startup. How old is the machine?

 

[WillyG4444 10+ year member]

I believe the Dells have a PC Restore feature, that returns the computer to it's original condition. I think it's F4 upon startup or something. That's what I did to my old Dell.

Or, you could go into system settings and tell it to boot a certain way perhaps

 

[djman37 5,000+ posts]

uninstall any software you don't want him to have, and delete your profile?

 

[fbi90909 5,000+ posts]

you need to format your hard drive if you have 2 installs of xp on 1 hard drive.

 

[_DjScrew_ 5,000+ posts]

you need to format your hard drive if you have 2 installs of xp on 1 hard drive.

why can't you have 2 installs on one hd? That's why they have partitioning.. If you meant to say on the same partition (I've seen it happen) then I understand.

 

[TurdFergueson2 5,000+ posts]

You could just buy another hard drive to throw into that one. But if you don't want to do that, download a wipe utility from here http://www.dban.org/download

After that (which may take a couple of hours) install XP again.

 

[grassroots 10+ year member]

boot up in dos mode, type /format c:

restart with windows in cd rom and go into bios. change start up settings to boot from CD drive and reinstall windows...

 

[aaron7114 10+ year member]

boot up in dos mode, type /format c:
restart with windows in cd rom and go into bios. change start up settings to boot from CD drive and reinstall windows...

My cd drive doesn't work.

 

[Doola36 10+ year member]

When I started all over on my PC I just formatted the hard drive and installed windows with the CD. Since your CD-Rom doesn't work you can go into CMOS and hav your laptop boot from the USB drive. When I did mine it wiped everything.

 

[aaron7114 10+ year member]

I can't figure out how to get it to boot from the USB cd drive.

 

[Scoobydoo 5,000+ posts]

enter the bios and switch the first boot device to usb

dells are a *****, they have hidden restore partitions so make sure you get in there and delete/remake all partitions before you reinstall

 

[aaron7114 10+ year member]

ok I am on the bios boot priority screen right now.

I see 5 items. IDE HDD, USB FDD, USB HDD, IDE CDRom, PCI Lan

I dont know how to add the USB cd drive to the list and make it number one

 

[Scoobydoo 5,000+ posts]

choose usb HDD, that should boot whatever is connected to usb

 

[TurdFergueson2 5,000+ posts]

I can't figure out how to get it to boot from the USB cd drive.

You might get lucky if you keep hitting the F12 button as it boots. Otherwise, you have to go into bios (either keep hitting delete, F1, or escape) and change the boot sequence to boor from your external cd player first. After that, you are on your own. I never tried to load an OS from an external source before.

Edit: NVM he's in BIOS