Quote:
Originally Posted by sidewinder
Hey Freebase, I got my CDs from Dell. Is there something specific I should be doing to boot from the CD? I inserted it into my drive, turned off the computer and turned it back on (this is because I have no way to reboot if I'm not already in the boot menu) and nothing happens. I still see the Dell load screen and I can go to setup or boot menu, but if I do nothing, nothing ever appears (just as was happening last time I posted). I get no prompt for the CD. Any ideas?
|
Edit:
(I just noticed you said "CDs" as in plural. Did they give you recovery CDs or the actual licensed XP installation disk? It matters. If it's the recovery CDs, then disregard everything below unless you want to boot from the first recovery CD to see if recovery console is included... in my experience, it never is. Recovery console is a feature of the Windows operating system... a recovery CD is an installable image. If this is the case, DO NOT select "restore" or whatever other option the recovery CD tells you... unless you're ok with losing everything on the harddrive. If it's the actual XP installation disk, read on.)
Your boot order isn't set so that you boot from CD before booting from the hard drive in the BIOS. You don't have to worry about changing it if you already know how to get to your boot menu. Just go to your boot menu and select the option to boot from your CD drive after you've inserted the XP disk.
After it starts booting, you'll see a blue screen with a bunch of stuff loading from the CD. Let it go through all that (usually takes a minute or two) and then you'll see some options like "press enter to install XP" or something to that effect, and "Press R to enter recovery console". That's the one you want. Press R and a black box will pop up, which looks just like command console. It will ask you to log into the administrator account, and you'll need the password. If you never set a password, just hit enter.
I used to have problems with that step sometimes with it not accepting any passwords, regardless of them being right. If that happens, you'll need another program and will have to do more steps, but the program you'll need can be found on the net as a .torrent but it's a little more complicated because you have to make a bootable CD out of it... so lets hope you have no problems with your administrator password.
If all's well with the password, you'll get a c:\ prompt in the recovery console. When you get to that point, let me know.