Can I reformat my dell with any windows xp disk?

Question

I bought this computer that is about 2 years old from RAC for cash as is. I asked about the XP disk which on my old pc National Rent to Own gave me and I had to use it to reformat after some nasty viruses. The guy at RAC said that this computer is different, you don't want to pop a disk in there and try to reformat. He said something about a ghost file or some type of backup or dual something or another on this pc. I had no idea what he was talking about and figured if he was trying to get out of giving me the cd that it did not matter, I could use another one if needed as long as it had the key code on it. Does anyone know about Dell computer's? This is my first one. Is anyone familiar with what this man who sold this to me was talking about? Under system information it says it is a Dell Dimension DE051. Someone give me on insight. My other computer was at least 6 years old, but I was familiar with it!!!

Answer 1

With Dell's it is recommended to order the factory restores from them for around $30 but you can use a standard XP disc as long as it is not system specific for something else. You would then be left without any burning software etc and would need to download all the drivers from Dell's website.  

Answer 2

As long as you have all the drivers for your computer I'm pretty sure It will work. I recently formatted my DELL Dimension E310 computer for the first time and put in some random windows XP disc. Normally, if you re-install Windows without formatting your hard drive (meaning installing windows while running windows), they ask for a product activation code and then you are pretty much screwed because it won't work if you have the right code. But, when I formatted my computer, it just installed Windows without any activation questions and within a few days of downloading my computer was back to the way it was. The only difference is that your computer does not recognize the that it's a DELL (but that is just something really minor). So you can try if you like and I'm pretty sure it will work fine for you.

Good Luck  

Answer 3

No Disk.....no format. This is my opinion: Junk the "Dell" it's a headache to do anything with. Build your own.

Answer 4

You can't use any recovery disc, only one that works with this Dell.  You can probably order a recovery set from Dell.  You need the model number on the front of the computer and the serial number on the back.  It's probably an 1100 or B110.

What the guy was talking about was making an image copy of the computer as it was at delivery, before you have a chance to get infections or mess it up.  There are lots of products that do this... he mentioned Ghost, I use Acronis.  You need an external hard drive.  This gets around the problem of not having a recovery set.

Or consider doing both.

If you use a regular xp installation disc, it will work but you'll need to get all the appropriate drivers from Dell.  It might be worth downloading them now and burning a disc.

Answer 5

First off, the DE051 is the model "code" for either the Dell Dimension model number 1100 or B100. I found that out at http://support.dell.com/support/topics/g... . They two very close to the same in most respects. However, since the links at Dell for the B100 are broken, I went with the ones for the 1100 at http://support.dell.com/support/topics/g... I grabbed the owner's manual from http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/sy... and took a peek.

It appears that the guy at RAC wasn't giving you a story after all. Around page 43-44 of the owner's manual at http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/sy... , there is indeed a description of how to restore your PC back to the factory install using Dell PC Restore by Symantec. Symantec makes a product called Norton Ghost, which makes complete copies of a drive as an image. That image can later be used to restore a drive back to it's exact contents at the time the image was captured. For this PC, Dell must have licensed a version of Ghost as their recovery mechanism.

How Dell has done this is using a hidden partition. That is, they set aside a special portion of the disk to hold the image of the Windows portion of the disk that was there the day the PC was unboxed. In that hidden partition along with the drive image, there will also be some boot programs and whatever is needed to un-Ghost the image back to the portion of the hard drive that contains Windows. I know this is the case because later on page 44, the manual goes into how to remove the restore partition. Let's hope the previous owner has not done this. Most likely, they have not.

The manual says you enter  <CTRL> + <F11> when you see the blue bar with www.dell.com appear while you are booting the system. The important thing is if you do this, anything you've put on the computer - word processing documents, spreadsheets, photos, etc. - will be deleted as part of the restore process. The Ghost process will wipe out anything you had put on there yourself. Back up anything you want to keep first.

To answer your original question, you could use any full Windows operating system install CD for your computer so long as you have a valid key for it. Somewhere on your Dell is probably the Windows XP key for your computer. At least, that's how they usually do it. Now, the sticky part of it is this. There are at least three versions of Windows XP: the original XP release, a release with service pack 1 (SP1) pre-installed, and a version with SP2 pre-installed. The keys for the original version of XP won't necessarily work with a the install version of XP with SP1 and vice versa. You'd need a version that matches the version of Windows XP you have. Given the age, it's probably Windows XP with SP2, but might be Windows XP with SP1.

If you were to reformat and reinstall the OS using the Windows CD, you'd need the Dell-specific drivers for your desktop. You'd get those from Dell *before* starting the process. They are at: http://support.dell.com/support/download... The safe bet is to get them all, but the most important ones to get are the networking and communications ones for your network adapter and/or modem depending on how you connect to the Internet. So long as that works, you could always download the others after the initial operating system install. Since they only offer drivers for XP, you'd obviously want to install an XP OS (rather than Vista or Windows 2000, for example).

Your best bet is to use the Dell PC Restore. It should be much, much quicker and less painless.

Answer 6

i think he was talking about is had a recovery portion on the hard drive already but i never use that i just stick and xp cd into the computer format it  

Answer 7

yes

but what is the  system configuration

if the system configuration is compatible with windows XP

u can proceed with XP bootable OS