clearing out my computer

[DARRYLXWF]

Ok, basically I've got my old Dell Inspiron 2650 with Windows XP and I want to completely clear EVERYTHING on my hard drive and start from scratch, even if it means just re-installing XP again.

 

Being computer illiterate, how do I do this?

[Jobber of the Week]

Chances are, you're going to need the emergency repair disc from Dell.

 

If you have a Microsoft-supplied XP disc (like the kind you can buy from the store) it might work, but OEM companies like Dell and Gateway and so on usually seem to install special hardware made just for them that only works with the special copy of XP they give you with the computer.

 

Unless this computer is so old that it shipped with one of the older OSes (98, ME) in which case a regular XP disc would likely work fine.

[Dr. Tyler; Captain America]

Well, if you have a copy of WinXP and a Dell, you can get the drivers you need off of their website and the emergency disc is unnecessary.

[Jobber of the Week]

Okay then. The only OEM machine I had was way way back in the day when 200mhz machines were new. The thing actually had an OEM-specific motherboard so you could only install Windows from the emergency disk.