How do I reinstall Windows XP without erasing my installed programs?
Here are the directions: 1. Boot the computer using the XP CD. You may need to change the boot order in the system BIOS. Check your system documentation for steps to access the BIOS and change the boot order. 2. When you see the “Welcome To Setup” screen, you will see three options. Choose the first one that reads: “To setup Windows XP now, press ENTER.” Do not choose the second option, “To repair a Windows XP installation using Recovery Console, press R.” This is not what you want, even though it sounds right. 3. Press Enter to start the Windows Setup. Again, do not choose “To repair a Windows XP installation using the Recovery Console, press R”. You do not want to load Recovery Console. 4. Accept the License Agreement and Windows will search for existing Windows installations. 5. Select the XP installation you want to repair from the list and press R to start the repair. If Repair is not one of the options, do not continue, or you will clear all your documents and programs. You’ll ne
Your first action here should be to run a disk diagnostic because, based on your symptoms, you have a hard disk problem. If you have the original CDs that came with your Dell, one of them will have the diagnostics on it, and it is a bootable CD. You may also have the diagnostics stored on a partition on your hard drive, if you still have the original configuration from Dell. Shut down your computer and reboot it. You will probably see something like F2=Setup F12=boot menu. Choose the boot menu and look to see if you have an entry marked “Diagnostics.” If you don’t, insert your diagnostics CD into the optical drive and select that as the boot device. When the diagnostics program comes up, run the whole slate – it will take a while, but you’ll need to be thorough. If your hard drive has no errors, you should be able to reboot to your Windows XP setup CD and choose the option to repair your existing Windows installation. This will not wipe out your configuration, it will try to fix your s
