Topic awaiting preservation: Wipe and reinstall a Dell...

... without one of those handy "Reinstallation CD's"

Still up here in Iowa, and one of the projects that came up was to "fix" my cousins family computer. Well, it doesn't need to be fixed so much, just wiped clean and have everything reinstalled that should be there. The problem, as you might have gathered, is that there isn't a Reinstallation CD that came with it. It came with Windows ME installed (shudders at the thought of using that everyday), and two disks: 1) Drivers and Utilities for upgrading to XP Home, and 2) XP Home upgrade.

I'm not real sure what the upgrade cd contains, but it says right on it, "This program will search your system to confirm your eligibility for this upgrade edition." So if I wipe the hard drive, it might have a bit of trouble finding what it's looking for I'm sure. Is it by chance just looking for the 25 digit registration key, so I can right it down and type it in when installing? Or when I upgrade, will it give me an option to format the hard drive before it installs?

I haven't had a lot of experience with OS upgrade cds. I'm used to working at my house and having my XP and 2000 cd's (among others), and an extra tower and whatnot to work with, but all that's about 1200 miles from here, so any help/advice would be much appreciated.


Thanks,
LF

-- Unoriginal Cell 693 --

The registration key is not likely to be what it is looking for.
Most Upgrade CDs require a previously installed version or the CD that can do the install. I don't know what XP upgrade needs but it looks like you won't be able to do a format of the drive.

http://www.duxcw.com/faq/win/xp/clean.htm
From the link above it looks like you can still format and repartition the drive after it has verified the previouse installation.

__________________________
"Show me a sane person and I will cure him for you."-Carl Jung
Eagles may fly high, but beavers don't get sucked into jet engines.
tj333- the semi-Christ

You should be all set, as long as you have the ME disk. XP will say it doesn't see a previous version, and allow you to browse to the ME disk to verify.

tj - It looks like the first one on that page is the closest, but it seems like it would still require a complete XP disk (again, this is where not knowing the precise difference between the XP disk and XP Upgrade disk kinda hurts).

Pugzly - Yep, if I had any OS disk, I wouldn't have any trouble (I've done that countless times), but all I have is the XP Upgrade cd

I think I'm just going to go into town tomorrow (if I get off work early enough) and pick up another HD and backup everything and use the other HD to play with. Then, even if it doesn't work out, I had a legitimate excuse to pick up another HD

-- Unoriginal Cell 693 --