OK... here's the skinny..

I have a dell laptop with windows me on it and have been infected with a virus of some sort ( not on that computer now!) My brother knows a little about computers and suggested that I simply go into dos and reformat the drive and put xp on ( which I have the disk for) He unfortunately was unaware of the way dos is unavailable in me without some sort of shenanigans that I am unaware of.

How can I get this computer wiped clean? I very simply don't need annnnyyyy of the information on it, so I just want to clean it off and start fresh. HOW? When I try to make a startup disk from add/remove programs it tells me there is a essential file missing and tells me to bust out the me disk for it... which I don't have anymore.

HOW do I get this drive reformatted?

Thanks! Please help!

Howdy:

If you want XP on it, all you have to do is boot the system using the XP cd.. Just make sure the first boot device in BIOS is set to boot from the cd-rom first.. As long as the XP cd is legit, it will boot right up and all you have to do is follow the prompts..

Murray

Hi,
Here is a link to a great site that gives step by step instructions for installing XP:

http://www.microsoft.com/WindowsXP/expertzone/columns/honeycutt/02october07.asp

It's a Microsoft site, but is written by a different person than most Microsoft help sites... one can understand it!

Just for information:
If you wish to add or subtract from an Experts' reputation, or show appreciation or discontent with an answer, click on the "balance scales" icon by the Experts' name. You can then choose what you wish.

Best wishes,
fredg

Spark,
There are some issues here that need to be mentioned.

First, if your XP CD has been used to install XP on any other PC, then it probably won't work on the lappy. XP has an activation routine. Once activated on one PC, if you change hardware you may need to contact Microsoft to reactivate.

Second, if the CD is an upgrade version, then you can just boot to the CD (assuming it hasn't been used to upgrade another PC) and run the upgrade electing to do a clean install.

If its NOT an upgrade CD, then it may require a bare drive to install to. In that case you need to create an emergency floppy to boot from. You can do this by right clicking on the floppy drive in My Computer. There should be an option to create a System Disk there. Or you can go to bootdisk.com and create one. You can then FDisk the drive after booting to the floppy.

Finally, you may need to adjust your boot sequence to make sure you can boot from CD. To do this go into your CMOS setup (press the indicated key during powerup) and look for something about boot sequence and make sure the CD is first.