Restoring Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005

*~Zephyr~*

Hi all, pleeeease help me!

I have an old Dell inspiron 6400 laptop that I use to play The Sims2. Yes, I know how sad that is

I think I've picked up some malware or viruses on it and it's buggy as hell now. I tried to reload my Sims games from scratch and came across SO many problems I was tearing my hair out!

Anyhoo, I have a more modern laptop that I use daily for internet and I purely want to use the old one for The Sims - no internet, no networking, nothing. So I'd like to do a complete wipe and restore the inspiron to the factory settings and start again with my games.

Unfortunately, Dell never gave me the Windows installation disks, so my question is: - can I do a full factory restore without installation disks???

Browntoa

If XP, press CTRL-F11 once at the Dell screen

choose Repair, then Restore from the menu

otherwise you can often source genuine Dell Xp CD's from Ebay cheaply

*~Zephyr~*

Thank you Browntoa! I'll try that tonight!

*~Zephyr~*

OK, so I used the factory restore and took the laptop back to box-fresh state.

And now the DVD-Rom won't read a disc. Any ideas why?

I've tried a multitude of game discs, music CD's and movie DVD's and it goes through the motions (i.e. all the usual whirrs and buzzes) but then just stops. And when you go through My Computer, it doesn't even acknowledge that there is a disk in there.

Is this a problem with XP or a hardware problem?

NiftyDigits

*~Zephyr~* wrote: »

OK, so I used the factory restore and took the laptop back to box-fresh state.

And now the DVD-Rom won't read a disc. Any ideas why?

I've tried a multitude of game discs, music CD's and movie DVD's and it goes through the motions (i.e. all the usual whirrs and buzzes) but then just stops. And when you go through My Computer, it doesn't even acknowledge that there is a disk in there.

Is this a problem with XP or a hardware problem?

Did I send you a private message?

*~Zephyr~*

NiftyDigits wrote: »

Did I send you a private message?

You did, thank you. I have replied - the file won't work because my battery doesn't hold enough charge