[mpenney]

How do I reinstall the software that was originally loaded onto the computer. D@mn machine is acting up and I want to do a clean install and get it back to its originally state.

I'm clueless to this so......

Thanks in advance,

MPenney

[Spencer2004]

well if your computer came with a windows setup disk then you need to boot it when you turn on your computer, it may not boot by default so you will need to pree del at startup to go into the scary blue menu called the bios, then locate your boot options and place your cd drive at the top. once you manage to get it to boot then its fairly simple but renember to format your disk drive first.

if you dont have a windows startup disk then you will either have to borrow one, buy one or download one from bittorrent. and before the wall of anti warez comments come flooding in hes allready got a copy of windows installed and i assume that he still has the serial so its legal.

if you get stuck i check my emails hourly so dont hessitate to ask

[thingie2]

Well, Spencer is right, however some motherboards allow you to press F12 at start up and choose the device to boot from, if you can do this, select CD/DVD/Optical drive (not sure what it will be called on your board) then follow the rest of the instructions (and like Spencer said, don't forget to format first)

However if you don't have a disk, I'm pretty sure it's illigal to borrow, or download a copy, even if you have your own copy. However if your computer was pre built (from Dell or similar) then it could well have a seperate partition (looks like a seperate hard drive in my computer) which is basicly the installation CD, and may be able to get burned to a CD for instalation, if not, you should be able to boot up to that drive to install.

Don't hessitate to ask any questions.

[mpenney]

When I insert the CD it prompts if I would like to boot from disk and press any key.
In doing so I have the option of repairing or reinstalling. In checking out the reinstalling it showed the version was still on there; probably because I never formatted the drive. I do however get confused with the command prompts.

Do any of y'all know of a list of instructions for this procedure.

Thanks for all the help,

MPenney

[Spencer2004]

somewhere along the lines of that procedure there should be a list of all your partitions, delete your primary partition (it says the size so you should be able to tell which is which) and create a new one then install on that.

[serverguy]

I think you just want to choose to Re-Install.

Then you should get the option to delete the partitions and start again.