instructions, i wanna format hard drive and reinstall xp

hey people, i have a dell 2300 really crappy, my mom bought it for me for my b-day, so i couldnt say anything. <throws bottle at person laughin at him in the back of the room> umm, i would like clear and concise instructions for doing this, i have the OEM installation cd, but thats about it. if you require incentive, i have a couple of gmail invites for ppl who help.

FDISK
http://www.fdisk.com/fdisk/

http://fdisk.radified.com/

REFORMAT
http://www.blackviper.com/Articles/OS/fdisk/fdisk1.htm

http://www.cyberwalker.net/faqs/how-tos ... l-faq.html
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html

Tricks of the trade are to (if you can ) burn all your stuff that you want to
put back on real quick on CD's
And another trick is to go into
C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Favorites,and copy all your bookmarks ,so you can put them back in the new C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Favorites
I think the least I ever had was about 250 bookmarks (so you no ) .

And if I was you I would take my time and read ,make notes ,make copy's of certain steps ..cause once you doit ,,you will want to do it again in maybe 6 months.

My one H/D that I keep my Operating system on (thats it ) I FDISK it ,and REFORMAT it ,every 2 months ..just to keep it fast (and it is ) .

thanks much man, this will be very helpful, if anyone else wants to add something, please feel free, i kinda want 3 different methods so i can choose one that seems easy. thanks

Did you *get* an actual windows xp disk? Or just a crappy restore/rescue disk from Dell? If you have a reg version of xp, first copy your system file folders to a cd. That way if there are some specialty drivers, you won't have to hunt for them later. Copy everything you want to save, favorites, email folders, etc. You can find your email folder by going into outlook express under tools > options > maintenance and click storage folder. XP hides a lot of stuff. Once you have everything you want, you can format your drive. Once that is done, make sure your bios is set to boot from your cd rom drive. Put in your xp disk, reboot. Should then boot from the disc; may ask to reformat or repartition. If you have a raid controller, you'll need a floppy disk with the drivers on it.

yo KissArny here...

i had to do th ekind o fthing that you want i think. my computer had virus galoor and massive pop ups. what i did was a destructive system restore. it starts your comp over from the store bought date, thus ridding me of my lovable virus and spyware problems. you do this by repeatedly pressing f10 upon start up and then just follow the instuctions. Also your going to have to backup all of the stuff you are gunna wanna save from ur harddrive. w/e i am not too proficient at this stuff but if u wanna talk my email is acdcayoung@aol.com
or you email me at
acdcayoung@hotmail.com