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Help me help my mom

J

jbh129

Senior member
My mom has a Dell 4300 and is trying to reinstall windows because the computer is very out of whack. However, when she inserts her windows reinstall disc and restarts the computer she does not get the option to do an install or repair. Over the phone I cant seem to help her find the right option to use. She tried using F8 but those options didnt seem right. I would appreciate any responses.

Thanks
 
Once in the setup she needs to set the primary boot device as cd, save the settings (F10) and re-boot.
 
What options does she get? From the description, we don't even know if it's booting from the CD.
It's a desktop, right? So you probably need to hit hit Delete as it's booting to get into the BIOS and check that the CD-ROM comes before the hard drive in the boot order.

Edit: Wow, 2 people beat me to the post while I was typing.
 
Ya. Most OEM-type PCs have the boot order with the harddrive first. That way when there is a blank harddrive the cdrom will boot and do that normal install, and when their is a OS on the harddrive it won't accendently boot up in "RESCUE MODE" if a user forgot to remove the windows cdrom.

Imagine some people's fear when they install a new USB mouse or something and it asks for the windows cd, then after installing the drivers it automaticly reboots. Then next thing they know they are staring at a blue screen informing them that if they press enter they will go into restore mode.
 
It is booting from the CD. It gives her the options of running in safe mode, debugging and serveral restore last good configuration items. However, there is nothing about installing or repairing windows.
 
The options you are mentioning are not those given when booting from CD
that sounds like the boot menu you get by hitting f8

You should get a prompt to "press any key to boot from cd"
then the windows setup process should start
 
I have looked in the Dell knowledge base to no avail. Do you think that formatting the hard drive would enable the option to install windows?
 
Originally posted by: jbh129
It is booting from the CD. It gives her the options of running in safe mode, debugging and serveral restore last good configuration items. However, there is nothing about installing or repairing windows.
Click to expand...
If you're getting those options, it's not booting off the cd. Follow DNet & EmoHawk's instructions and stop hitting F8!
 
She said that she is getting the "press any key to boot from cd" option. I told her to press the space bar and then she gets those options. This is not easy to figure out over the phone. I walked her through placing the CD as the first boot device. If it refuses to boot from the CD can I have her use the CD to make a boot floppy to start this process.
 
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