Inspiron 6000 system restore

I've been having problems with my dell and think I need to take it back to basics, the factory settings. I've tried the crtl and f11 key on start up but this wont work. Any suggestions, I'm no PC wizard as you can see.
Cheers
Jim

 

Troubleshooting steps:

(1) Are you sure you have a DSR (PC Restore) partition? When you boot into XP, take a look in Disk Management (Start>Run>"diskmgmt.msc") and look at the schematic "map" of Disk 0. If you see an "unknown" partition of about 3-5 GB at the end of the disk with no drive letter, that suggests your DSR partition is still there.

(2) Do you have a Dell MBR? This is easily overwritten, so even if your system shipped with the Dell MBR, it might not necessarily still have it. The telltale sign of the Dell MBR is a black screen with a single blue line at the top, with "www.dell.com" in white-on-blue letters. This screen should appear for 2 seconds between the POST phase (Power-On Self Test, with the giant blue Dell logo) and the XP splash screen (when XP starts to boot).

(3) If the answer is yes to both, then make sure you're pressing Ctrl+F11 at the right time. When the POST phase starts, you'll see the blue Dell logo, there will be a brief delay, then the "F2" and "F12" prompts will appear in the corner of the screen. After POST completes, you'll see the 2-second pause with the blue-line, followed by the XP splash screen.

You must press Ctrl+F11 after the F2/F12 prompts appear, and before the end of the 2-second blue-line pause. Hold down the Ctrl key, press down the F11 key, then release both keys together. (Note: contrary to urban legend, it's okay to press the keys more than once.)

 

I also wish to restore my laptop to factory settings. I tried the Ctrl + F11 function, and it did not work.

I read through your post, and tried the Ctrl + F11 at the time specified and in the way specified. It did not work for me.

For (1), I'm not sure. I did as you said, but I couldn't tell if there were 3-5 GB free on the end of that bar, I thought maybe it's so tiny I wouldn't see on this 120GB drive. So, I'm not sure if the backup partition is there or not. Is there any other way to check?

For (2), I want to say no? The blank page described with the blue line comes up for me, but without the blue line. It just has a blinking horizontal cursor in the top left corner. Does that mean that I don't have one?

And since my answers to both of them (neither of them) was a definite yes, then what should I do?

I tried chatting to Dell Tech Support yesterday, and to no avail other than he acknowledged what I had done had not been working. He was going to try to login on my laptop remotely, but we got disconnected in between. I tried a second time today, but it was no use, that support lady treated me as if I had never told her that I had already been through everything yesterday, and she said that all the above stuff should not matter, and to just keep trying F11. Any other help or suggestions I can get? Thanks!

 

I got this laptop too.

I use a XP and put the CD in and install.

I copy the network driver to my USB flash drive. Then after the new install of the OS, I install the network driver and get to Dell website to get the rest of the drivers.

Never look back at any Dell installation disk etc

 

I followed your steps and im not quite sure about a couple of things:
(1) in my disk management i have a partition of about 63mb labeled "fat" and another partition which is my c: drive labeled ntfs, both healthy. are any of them my DSR? if they are not is it possible to get?

(2) i do have the blue tab thing running along the top of the screen near start up.

(3) when i press <Ctrl><F11> during the start up whilst the "www.dell.com is in blue at the top of the screen just under in white writing it says "cannot restore"

what should i do man?? i need to restore my computer.