Computer help needed

[bubbas1]

Inlaws have a Dell Computer with Windows XP.
There computer is really messed up so they want to start over from scratch. They want to reformat the hard drive and they dont care about losing all the info on the computer.

The problem with the computer is its extremely slow,keeps locking up and there is a sims game that cannot be uninstalled. They have had these problems for about a year..computer is about 3-4yrs old I think.

I am looking for the steps to reformat the hard drive. They gave me all of the disks so everything should be able to be loaded back up into it.

Can anyone post the step by step directions for me?
Thanks

 

[bsucards]

they should have given you a system disk and maybe a programs disk. The systems disk, you should be able to put in and restart the pc and it will boot off that and walk you through the install. One of the steps should be to format the drive. It should include all the drivers, or they might be on another cd.

Here is a good program to run before formatting:
http://belarc.com/free_download.html

It will tell you everything you need to know about the pc, such as the modem and sound card etc. Print it out if you can.

Make sure to go to Windows Update after doing the reinstall

 

[bubbas1]

I have the system disk and when I put it in the computer just loads up like it always does. I have even shut down and restarted the computer with the disk in. I even tried hitting F12 during initial startup and then clicked the option to boot from a disk.Nothing.It dosent boot off the disk and give me any options.

 

[stomie]

Go into the bios and manually change the boot order. After turning on the computer keep hitting F1 until the bios comes up.

 

[bubbas1]

That did the trick. Thanks for the help.