Booting from the CD ROM Drive

[Guest]

Recently, my computer has been running incredibly slow. The computer is a
Dell Inspiron 6000 Laptop with Windows XP Home Edition service pack 2
installed. I need to reformat my harddrive and completely wipe everything off
of it and reinstall the OS. I did the same thing on my friend's computer
without any trouble by booting from the CD ROM, but my computer refuses to do
this. I CANNOT get it to boot from the CD ROM. Someone please help me with
this. I either need to boot from an inserted Windows XP Upgrade CD ROM or
start the computer in MS-DOS mode without actually starting Windows XP so I
can FDisk. Any help on how to do either will be much appriciated.

 

[Ted Zieglar]

Dell Knowledge Base Article 295074
"How do I configure my Dell Inspiron series portable computer to boot to
the CD or DVD drive?"
http://tinyurl.com/yf9mnz

 

[Guest]

Tried it and it worked, thanks, man!

Dell Knowledge Base Article 295074
"How do I configure my Dell Inspiron series portable computer to boot to
the CD or DVD drive?"
http://tinyurl.com/yf9mnz

 

[Ted Zieglar]

Glad to help, but I can't take the credit. Dell has an extensive library
of technical help articles called the Dell Knowledge Base.