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BOUGHT A LATITUDE C 600 SOMEONE HAD INSTALLED XP AND NOW IT WANTS A KEY. I CANT EVEN GET TO WINDOWS TO REFORMAT THE HARD DRIVE SO i CAN INSTALL A NEW OS.
If you put a BootCD in the CD drive then turn the system on you should be able to format the HDD from the CD. Also, your new operating system disk should allow you to reformat the HDD. Just put the CD in and start the computer up again. Watch for a message to press the spacebar or any other key to boot from the CD.
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try other known good windows installer. if it boot, then the problem is in xp installer, if it not. try other external cd-rom drive. also be sure the disc rom drive are dvd rom drive because a cd rom drive cannot read dvd disc but a dvd rom drive can read cd rom disc installer
I would definitely reformat my hard drive and reinstall my Windows XP, reinstall my programs, and use my backups to restore my data. After that I would install a good antivirus program and then re-install my windows 7 trial version. Have fun!
An 0146 message may not be a "death knell" like an 0142 would be. It can mean there are bad sectors of the drive that can be repaired by CheckDisk, which in a DOS command window is typed as CHKDSK. If you have your XP recovery Disk or retail disk, you can boot off the disk and act like you're re-installing Windows. After the brief Setup period you'll stop at a window that gives you an option to repair by pressing the R key.
After pressing the R key, a command prompt will appear. Type in HELP and hit the enter key. Then continue to hit the enter key a few more times until you reach a blinking cursor where you can type a command. At that point, type in CHKDSK and hit the enter key. It's entirely possible CheckDisk will go find the bad sectors on the hard drive, repair them and allow you to reboot into Windows normally.
There are other options but those are considered to be for "advanced users". Basically an advanced user is someone who would already know what the next steps would be and how to perform them. If what I suggested for you above isn't possible, find an "advanced user" friend before you completely give up on your data.
Finally, failing that, you would have to use an XP install disk to re-install windows and you must reformat using the regular 'slow" NTFS selection. The "quick" reformat will not repair bad drive sectors.
For completely reformat the drive you need any operating system CD.
Like windows xp,windows vista windows 7 etc. Then boot from cd and when you when partition manager show just delete all the drive and reallocate the space for new drive part. Be sure you need to install new os to get working the computer and also Be sure that YOUR ALL DATA WILL BE DELETED. BACKUP EVERYTHING BEFORE DELETE IT.
Hi. There are several causes for this type of error. Either your Windows CD is corrupted, hardware is faulty (Motherboard, RAM, hard disk, video card, etc.). You may want to try to reformat your hard drive using another computer first just to isolate if your hard drive is faulty. If you can format it using another computer, try installing windows on that computer.
There are about a dozen Dell drivers you'll need to load. If you can download these on another unit to a flash drive. Then install on your laptop. If you don't have another unit, take your flash drive to your nearest public libray. There you can download what you need to a flash drive.
to perform a clean install of your XP. follow this steps.
1. Start your computer from the Windows XP CD-ROM. To do this, insert the Windows XP CD-ROM into your CD drive or DVD drive, and then restart your computer. 2. When you see the "Press any key to boot from CD" message, press any key to start the computer from the Windows XP CD-ROM. 3. At the Welcome to Setup screen, press ENTER to start Windows XP Setup. 4. When you see the End-User License Agreement, press F8. 5. Follow the instructions on the screen to select and format a partition where you want to install Windows XP. This would be your c:\ drive
note: when formating the drive do not choose the quick format option.
6. Follow the instructions on the screen to complete Windows XP Setup.
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