[fattty]

I just sold my Dell mini 10v and I have tons of information and items on the hard drive! Please tell me how to do a reformat to windows xp factory settings. i have to do it in the next 3 hours. I have the Reinstallation CD Recovery Media for Microsoft Windows XP home edition product sp3 but no external drive to put it in. I am 14 and am a noob with computers -_-. Please give me a very very detailed tut on how to do this.

P.S. Could i just right click hard drive and click format to erase everything? What does that do?

[rrfranczak3]

formatting will erase the drive, but I dont think that it will let you format your primary partition, do you have access to another computer with a CD/DVD drive and do you have a Flashdrive?

[fattty]

I do have a desktop, and a 4gb lexar flashdrive. I also have the disc that came with the mini, but i've read around and i don't know if that will work for the usb methods.

[rrfranczak3]

you need to create a windows setup disk on your flashdrive...use this utility

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there is a format utility..click on RMPrepUSB, that will guide you thru formatting the USB, also make sure that the Original Windows Setup disk is in the drive, then create the setup on the Flash, when you are done, plug the flash into your Mini and when the Dell logo comes up, get into the BIOS and set the boot to "LEGACY USB" that should reinstall Windows on your system be sure to pick new installation or whatever option it is to format your drive so that it overwrites your current drive

PS. Any thought of saving what you have?????????????????

[fattty]

Yes, I just moved all my pictures & things onto my family desktop and can delete whatever now. I will try that method later but I don't want to screw anything up :P i read on a tut for winsetupfromusb that there is a 3 part installation after plugging in the usb to netbook?