How to reinstall XP? (after formated HDD)

[Thomas]

Hello!

my friend has just formated the c-hdd. and now he
rebooted the machine withe the XP cd in. But it won't
read the cd. The laptop are only searching for at disk.

Do he have to change the Bios, so the laptop next time
start searching for a cd??

Thanks!

 

[purplehaz]

Yes, go into the bios and set the first boot device to cdrom.

 

[Steve C. Ray]

Yes, he needs to set the CD drive as the first boot device.

 

[Alex Nichol]

my friend has just formated the c-hdd. and now he
rebooted the machine withe the XP cd in. But it won't
read the cd. The laptop are only searching for at disk.

Do he have to change the Bios, so the laptop next time
start searching for a cd??

Yes. As you power on hit the hotkey to enter BIOS setup (see the manual,
or try DEL; F2; F10 which are common ones). There either a Boot page,
where select the CD drive and use the number pad + key to push it to the
top; or a BIOS settings page and use PageDn to cycle the Boot order
value round to CD first. ESC to exit and exit saving settings to boot
the XP CD direct. Enter Setup, and after the license agreement take New
Install. When it asks you to confirm where, hit ESC; select and delete
the current partition and make a new RAW one to be formatted at the next
stage

The important point is the delete. Without that it will just go ahead
and make a new install over the top of the old one: I would not trust
whatever means of formatting he has used