Help Formatting, Re-Install windows

okay so my friend asked me to formatt and re-install windows on this old ass Acer travelmate 2200... i have no idea how to do it, most the laptops i have done have had a built in function for such a thing, i tried booting it off of my windows xp disc but it just sits there for 5 minutes doing nothing then boots to windows, any help would be appricated.

 

Pressing the F12 key should bring up the Boot Menu, and then select to boot off the cd-rom.

 

yea i did that and then it sits with just _ for about 5 minutes then boots windows.

 

Any scratches or anything on the disc? If you boot in to Windows, are you able to read the disc?

 

its a new disc my origonal xp disc wasscratched so i downloaded a image and burnt that, i used it last week to install xp on my gf's mac and it worked fine so its a scratchless disc.

 

Download a bootable ISO and try booting from that instead (like FreeDOS or Linux or something).

That will determine whether it's a problem with the laptop booting from CD, or whether your Windows install disc is just bad.

As has already been mentioned, make sure the CD comes *before* floppy or HDD in the bios boot menu.

 

the disc is good i just used it like last week to install it on OS i'll try linux later rite now i must go out and work for a few hours

 

does the cd/dvd rom actually work?

 

Unfortunately, all that means is that the disc was good last week; it has little relevance to whether the disc is good today.

 

umm yea the dvd/cd rom acctuly works and i burnt a new disc and it dose the same thing

 

So you can put the disc in and start it up within windows no problem.

 

humm it isent detecting it but it detects my other disc.. so it must not eb able to read CD-R, thanks i never even thought of that