Starting Over Help!

My daughters laptop is a complete mess...have decided I need to erase the
hard drive and reload XP. Bought it today. Question: What is the prefered
method of completely erasing/reformatting the hard drive and reinstalling XP?

Hi,

As this is a laptop, you should refer to the manufacturer's recovery
documentation.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/
Associate Expert - WindowsXP Expert Zone
www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone
Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

"helpfuldad" <helpfuldad@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:0E2025EC-1651-4F29-843D-9BD18F2D08D0@microsoft.com...
> My daughters laptop is a complete mess...have decided I need to erase the
> hard drive and reload XP. Bought it today. Question: What is the
> prefered
> method of completely erasing/reformatting the hard drive and reinstalling
> XP?

Just bought it today?
the computer or XP?
didn't the laptop already have Win XP CD?

laptops needs drivers that are usually on a special cd!

"helpfuldad" wrote:

> My daughters laptop is a complete mess...have decided I need to erase the
> hard drive and reload XP. Bought it today. Question: What is the prefered
> method of completely erasing/reformatting the hard drive and reinstalling XP?

Rick "Nutcase" Rogers wrote:
> Hi,
>
> As this is a laptop, you should refer to the manufacturer's recovery
> documentation.
>

I did that once; Reinstalled the OS without looking at the documentation
and then went to a higher version of Windows. If you have recovery disks
with the laptop, use them! When I did an it I lost the touch pad, sound,
modem, and video; a horrid mess and left the laptop a paper weight.
Thank the heavens that Microsoft released a driver for sound, Compaq (
my laptop ) had released old drivers for the touch pad, and Win2000 had
the drivers for the video. As a result to this, I learned that never
upgrade or reinstall an OS on a laptop without consulting the
manufacturer or documentation.