Wiping the Hd of my 1520

Hey i have wiped my 1520 a couple times before but not for a long time and i forgot exactly how to do it, any help?

 

Use a cloth

There are guides on installing windows, use the search

 

when i tried the install windows option on the operating system disc that came with the laptop i ended up just overwriting my previous windows file and the hdd wasnt wiped.

 

i dont care about a clean install, ill deal with the bloatware later, i just want to reformat my laptop, please help!

 

http://www.killdisk.com/

 

i pretty much cant access anything, my laptop is really messed up, i put another copy of XP on it or something, i dont have any drivers apparently, i dunno what i did

 

killdisk didnt work, i selected hard disk 0 and killed everything, it wasnt able to delete everything and when i tried to reboot the comp was missing a file and was unable to load, i am now installing windows for a 3rd time so i can start up my laptop, this is stupid

 

Well duh, you can't use it inside of Windows. You have to boot to it either with a floppy or CD.

 

regardless, i know there is an easier and simpler way to do this once someone tells me where to find the system recovery program/partion thing.

 

What? Are you trying to wipe the HDD or reinstall the OS? Your recovery partition is by default your D: drive.

 

wipe HDD, how do i access my d: drive? is that how i reformat?

 

You wipe a HDD with a bit formatter, like KillDisk.

 

Let's make sure you didn't get rid of the Dell recovery partition.

1. Reboot your machine
2. Just after the Dell BIOS splash screen appears press F8 repeatedly until the advanced boot options screen appears (If your using Windows XP then push and release the CTRL and F11 keys at the same time when the Dell splash screen appears.
3. If your running Vista, go ahead and select "repair your computer" and log in with an account that has administrator rights. Click "Dell Factory Image Restore" and step through the wizard. (If your using Windows XP then you should see the Dell PC Restore window. Click Restore, then in the pop up window, click Confirm.

If none of these work, or you get error messages, chances are that you may have formatted the recovery partition as well. In this case, you'll have to install Windows manually:

Ok. when you got your 1520 there should have been, among other things, at least 3 CD's/DVD's:

1. The Media Direct reinstallation disk
2. A Windows Vista (or XP) disk
3. A "drivers and utilities/Dell Resource CD" disk

You should have also received additional CD's for any software that came bundled with the system or that you added to your order. If you have lost any of the disks you can request more here: https://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/dellcare/en/backupcd_form

Since you have the Windows disk, try to look around and see if you have the other two. I'll hand you off to the Dell website that can explain the installation steps in greater detail if necessary, but in general, you'll install the OS first, then pop in the Drivers and Utilities/Dell Resource CD, have it scan your system for any missing drivers, and install them in the correct order.

The Dell webpage link with more information on restoring your PC both from the recovery partition and the disks: http://support.dell.com/support/top...286187&docid=3E48AE3870775D64E040A68F5B2877D4

Hope this helps,

Ricky

 

thanks ricky, but how do i get these 2 installations of windows xp off of my cpomputer now? (when i boot up the laptop i have to choose which identical installation of win xp to run)

oh and pressing ctrl+f11 does not work

 

ok i did a clean wipe of the laptop and now im having other problems, please see

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=3172310#post3172310