molecularfire

Ok, here's where I'm at. I used to have some mild computer skills but years of neglect have left me pretty far behind. I got the about:blank virus and it's driving me nuts. I've tried running adaware, spybot, cwshredder, norton, etc... without success. I'm now tired of being cute with this guy. I want to just format my hard drive and re-install windows. Oh... there's also a partition problem with my hard drive secondary to me trying to partition it with my old windows ME boot disk. I've tried to make a boot disk from the version of XP that I have, but for some reason can't find that option. This means that either dell is being a jerk about not letting you do this with their software (possible), I'm not looking in the right place (also possible) or that XP doesn't use bootable disks with files like fdisk and format. Anyways, If anyone knows if this is true, could you please inform me the best way to format my hard drive and fix the partition problem. Also, if anyone can e-mail me the files to make the necessary bootable disk, I would really appreciate it. I would call dell, but my warranty ran out a long time ago.

TIA

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Disclaimer - The above opinion should not be taken as medical advise. My only advise is to talk to your doctor. If you are stupid enough to take anything I say seriously, you have nobody to blame for your cranio-anal inversion but your stupid self.

I may not be smart enough to do everything but I am dumb enough to try anything. - Beastboy.

DarkFury

Windows XP does NOT in fact use fdisk like previous editions of Windows... There is a place to get the files to create a "boot disk" (it's several disks as I remember), however I can't remember where I last saw that.\

The EASIEST way to reformat and re-install Windows XP is to set your CD-ROM as the first boot device in your BIOS, pop in the XP disk and let the CD do the reformat for you...

Pretty much the disk will walk you through the process.

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ramazank2

If you really want a boot disk you can get one from www.bootdisk.com I always use win98 boot disks when I need one. But DF is right just boot to your win XP CD it will have al the options you need.

You can still call DELL after warranty I believe, they just wont replace parts.

ACE

Link for Pro and Home version boot disks.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/r...DisplayLang=en

molecularfire

Thanks everybody for your advice. I can't believe that it didn't occur to me to boot off the CD. Man... been too long since I've dabbled in this stuff. Anyways, everything worked out fine for me. Now, I'm in the process of reinstalling everything (probably a good thing because there were a bunch of programs in my computer that I don't want installed anymore, just too lazy to uninstall them). Anyways, thanks you guys. You rock. First round's on me.

DarkFury

Whoo hoo!!!

I'm glad you got your PC runnin' mang...