Hello, I have an old computer, I am not sure whic model or brand, I recieved it from a friend. After having problems with spyware, my computer loads, uintil it gets to the Microsoft XP screen, in which case it freezes. This happens every time. Now, I have tried to place my XP cd into the CD-rom and run a repair install etc. or reformat, and it will not read any CDs, nor rboot into safe mode, nor allow me into bios. I have no idea why this happens, but it freezes every time, and will not allow me into safe mode or the BIOS. I was wondering if there was a way for me to simply erase everything, with all these things happening, and simply reinstall windows and repartition the drive after? Thank you for the help in advance. -Matt

If you cannot boot a CD the BIOS is probably not set to boot the CD drive prior to the hard drive.

If you can get as far as the XP screen then you must be able to enter the BIOS setup.

Are you saying that you do not know the proper key to press?

Perhaps: Esc; F1; F2; F10; Delete are among the most common.

Besides this assuming that the floppy drive is set to boot prior to the hard drive you can run the 6 floppy XP setup which will lead to your XP CD:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=310994

Ok, I have reached the BIOS,what can I do to configure the BIOS to boot from my XP CD? Or what should I do from this step to begin to clear my hard drive.

Set the boot menu to boot:

1. Floppy

2. CD drive

3. Hard disk drive

Then boot the XP CD. If you want to clear your drive just tell XP to install NTFS on a single partition.

That's all you need do.

Here is a good install guide:

http://michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html

Ok, I realized that I don't have the XP CD that I used to install, so I was wondering if it was possible to completely wipe my harddrive without the use of my XP CD, because I want to install ME afte rI completely wipe the harddrive. Is that possible?

http://www.burzurq.com/forum/format_reinstall.html

I'm aware how to install it, but I have an old XP installation on, and when I attempt to install my ME over it, it simply, halfway through setup, says this is not the correct operating system CD, I believe it is because I need my XP cd, and don't have it, and was wondering, without an y operating system CD's, if I can still wipe my hard drive. Thanks a bunch.

What CD do you have? ME? If so using a boot disk & formatting should work.

This was described in the above link. More here:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=255867

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&i...=Google+Search

http://www.23cc.com/free-fdisk/

Ok, I got as far as to formatting the partitions on my hard drive, which is what uses the format C: s/ command, and when I clicked it, it didn't work, I also tried to extract the file to my floppy with the ME startup disk on it, and it said "general error". Now, I'm not sure if this is because I'm using an ME operating system disk on a harddrive that orginally had XP installed, or if it is likely my startup disk is faulty. I attempted to download an ME startup disk, after I used an XP computer to create an XP startup disk that didn't work, and neither have helped. Any suggestions?