A friend has a problem on his PC. It is two months old and it would seem to be the best solution to do a fresh install. This is a Dell Dimension 4600 that came with a Dell XP reinstallation CD. Does anyone know if the CD contains what is needed to format and do a fresh install or are the files located on the hard drive where doing a format would erase the needed XP installation files? And, how do you format an XP machine? (as you can probably tell I use Win98) Thanks for reading.

Dell is very good about providing software on CD's. My experience with Dell (dozens and dozens of them) is that the entire operating system is on the reinstallation CD. You should also have other CD's with the Dell-installed apps such as Norton Antivirus and PowerDVD and other utilities. It's simple to check. Place the reinstallation CD in the PC, turn on the power and you should boot to the XP install program. If not, reboot and go into the BIOS and change to boot order to boot from CD. You will at some point be given the choice to install XP fresh or to reinstall. Reinstalling takes as long as a fresh install, but maintains your programs and desktop shortcuts. You might want to try that first so you don't have to reinstall all the other software. Whatever you do, don't forget to back up the data you want to keep. To format XP, it's the same procedure. When asked where to install XP, you will be given a screen with partitions and the option to delete and create them. If you choose to go that route, I would delete the partition, re-create the partition, and then the next option is how you want to format it -- either with NTFS or FAT32. Good luck.

Kevin, Thank you very much for the feedback. I chose to try the repair. Unfortunately it did not fix the problem either. Tomorrow I will perform a fresh install as per your recommendations. I do expect to have success there. On a side note (in case you were wondering): I have been running Win98FE for over four years and never once had a problem I could not overcome. In this case it is WinXP and a Wireless internet connection. It is not mine. It will not connect to internet sites. The owner has allowed a teenager to have her way with it. It now has trojan horse Stubby.A, Kazza, AIM, MSM messaging, Bargin spyware and an assortment of other items. The owner decided to install McAfee Sucurity Center but ran into a problem and then uninstalled it without shutting it down first. So, somewhere between all of the above it will not connect to any internet sites. I have tried CWSHedder, SpyBot S&D, BHODemon, removed 70 registry entries for Mcafee and installed Free AVG (which did find the trojans (2)). Where I am stumped is that the Linksys PCI card to the router offers no place to make any settings or configuration changes so there is nothing to fix there. The devices are communicating and I can PING but that is it. I am thinking that there is a corruption or a bad setting in the registry that I can not locate to repair. (Does XP have "scanreg /fix"?) Format and fresh install should take care of it. Also, there are no valid restore points existing on this machine that is two months old. Thanks again, Bryan

Bryco, I've got a 4600, and Dell does have a hidden partition on the drive. Besides the Dell applications, utilities, and driver CD's you should have received a Dell OEM XP-- CD.

There are ways to make changes to the PCI card. Have you gone into Control Panel > Network Connections and right clicked Local Area Connection, left click Properties? If you highlight Internet Protocol TCP/IP and click on Properties, you can make IP address changes there. By the way, is the IP static or dynamic? I've seen problems connection to the internet when the IP was set to static, yet no problem when set to Automatically Obtain an IP Address.

Kevin and JohnO, Thank you for the input. I did succeed in finding where and how to adjust the PCI card's settings. Unfortunately it was in vain. I tried all of the restore points but they were deemed as invalid and unusable by XP due to the fact that the driver for the Linksys PCI card was not signed. I wound up doing a format and fresh install (due to the confidence instilled by your informative feedback). I determined some spyware or trojan had mucked with a registry setting that I could not locate to fix. All is working good now. Thanks again, Bryan