Make sure you do not have to have a specific boot disk for the dell, a lot of dells are picky with the disk they boot. In addition if you swap out parts, specifically in a lot of laptops, the system recognizes a change and may not take the new hardware that was changed such as a switched hard drive, or anything of that nature. There is ways around stuff like that, you must use a master disk as mentioned above, even if you are missing drivers, you can get them off the internet once you get into windows.

I think I remember having an issue on a dell a few years back when there were no discs. It was all a backup partition on the hard drive.


In that case, you can get a boot disk made but you'll have to get access to another computer to make it.

Option 1.
With dell, get the service tag, call dell, ask to purchase a replacement recovery disk, they will charge you (don't quote me on this) 25 bucks for the disks and the shipping.. The machine would need to be licensed for windows XP in order to get this... as 2k is no longer supported..

Option 2.
Find a friend who has a netbook, take their XP home disk and reinstall the OS using the key stamped on your dell desktop, Find a friend with an HP or Dell machine who has the Windows XP pro install disk, and reinstall the OS with the key stamped on your dell desktop.
Download the NIC drivers from dells website, install them on the desktop, then just run a custom update from windows website to install all the other drivers and windows updates..
(NOTE: if the key fails you may have to call microsoft, make sure to just tell them you reformatted, if they ask you got a virus, DO NOT MENTION you used software borrowed from a friend)


Andrew,
Definitely correct, Dell, Hp, Gateway all did that partition crap..
(Also, no gruff on the installing drivers from Microsoft's website, I know all about that, but for the sake of ease.. well ya know?)

The only issue with #2 is if there have been major updates. I'm assuming that once a service pack is released, the algorithms are changed because my XP home code (I upgraded to xp pro) did not work with the SP2 (I think) xp home software my brother has... he lost his code.

Andrew,
It will still work, but you would need to call Microsoft on its failure and tell them that it wont work.. Just state you reformatted the machine to clean up viruses, and they will give you another code... Or what you can do is run a program called Magic Jelly bean, and it will tell you all of your Serial key number/registration codes, then just write them down, you would need to do this prior to reformat..
They also fixed it with vista and windows 7, but with Xp you had a multi-processor key, the key could work on 2 processors.. well the only issue with that back when xp came out,(which is why Quad cores don't show up that way in XP) is that their was only hyper-threading which didn't show as 2 processors, as a dual core will..
So as their license was written, if you have a P3 or P4 processor, single core, you could legally install the OS on two machines using a single key. They later rewrote this and now it is different in licensing and being legal... "technical Loophole"

It could just be your ram. My brother had the same problem.He has a dell. I told him it could be his memory or ram. Sure enough thats what it was.

I told him to pull one out and then reboot. Then it booted up. Try that. Pull one or your ram out and reboot. If that dont work, put it back and remove the other ram then reboot. One of your rams may be bad.

Your computer will give your a beeping code when you boot up to tell what is wrong with your computer. Just count the beeps lets say,

one beep then two quick beeps then one slow beep. Then look up your beep code for your mother board on the internet. But try removing the ram first.