I have had all sorts of problems since installing 7 on my other/older pc's. I now want to format hardrive & reinstall XP ( a complete fresh install) I have tried rebooting from cd with xp & linux discs, 7 will not let me do it. I cant access the net because it is wireless connected & the drivers are not compatible with 7.
What is the simplest way of wiping the HDD & reverting to a clean HDD
Thanks in advance
Is your first boot device set to your CD.DVD drive in the BIOS? On a lot of laptops they set it to hard drive to save time. Just go into the BIOS and set the first boot device to CD/DVD drive. You should be able to boot to it after that.
Thanks for the advice (its a desktop) I checked the bios .and I had set first boot device to cd, but it wont let me save it. Pressing F10 save & quit doesn't work 7 trying to save manually Y or N before esc doesn't work either................am I missing something??
There must be a way to save changes in the BIOS. You may be having problems with a USB keyboard, i don't know
You can also find the "boot menu" it is sometimes F12 or F10 at boot and it will give you the option to boot from any bootable connected device once. See if you can find out what triggers the boot menu on your board, then choose CD drive. it will just boot from that once then revert to whatever is default.
Many thanks..................it was the usb keyboard
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