I'm hoping that someone can help me,
I have got a Dell lap top what i'd like to reformatt, but i don't know how. can someone help me with this please
I have windows XP disc
If your laptop came with a recovery disc, and that's the disc you're talking. just bung it in the drive and restart your laptop. It should boot from the CD and then just follow the on screen instructions. Don't forget to backup all your documents and stuff, because it will completely wipe your hard drive.
If you're not using a recovery disc, and just using a standard installation of XP, the you need to make sure you get all appropriate drivers for your laptop beforehand. Try searching through the Dell website to download the appropriate drivers, and then copy them to a disc or a USB drive before reformatting.
Is there a reason you want to reformat? If the computer is slow you might want to do a defrag instead.
If the computer has virus/spyware then a reformat is recommended.
If possible get the free macrium reflect, have that program make a complete copy of your hard drive and save on an external,and create a bootcd from within the program. Worst case scenario, that backup well at least restore your laptop back to it's current configuration.
Test your xp boot cd, make sure it will bootup your laptop. Also download all the latest xp drivers for your laptop and burn them to a cd (you might need to install that cd during installation of xp).
