You have to do one of two things:
Depending on the kind of laptop it is, you can hit a key to enter a boot menu which will allow you to choose what device to boot from (to format your laptop and reinstall Windows, you will want to boot from your Windows DVD)
Try tapping F9 or F12 over and over right after you power on the machine to see if it gives you the boot menu.
If not, you need to enter your motherboard's BIOS setup (the key to hit is different for different motherboards, but it should tell you which.....if it is an HP machine try F10, Dell try F2, if neither you can try F1, Delete, or Esc
From there you can use the on screen keyboard instructions to change the "BOOT ORDER"....Set the DVD ROM Drive listed higher than the Hard Drive and then it will check the DVD drive for boot files before moving on to the hard drive to try and boot.
This article may have some more detail for you...keep in mind this can be different with each manufacturer: http://pcsupport.about.com/od/fixtheproblem/ss/bootorderchange_3.htm
If you dont know how...this is the last thing you should be doing
assuming that you realize formatting you had disk will result in a laptop without an OS (ie windows) just an error saying "invalid system disk"
go to dos by typing CMD into the run command
type
diskpart [enter]
select disk 0 [enter]
select partition 1 [enter]
format [enter]
56 views
Usually answered in minutes!
×