[Nude_Lewd_Man]

Quote:

Originally Posted by donweinstein

I have a WinXP sp 2 recovery diskette but its for a prior Dell system I owned. Should I use it? Or how do I look at the BIOS to confirm / remove conflicting software? Should I disable the USB port? If so, how?

Hi Don,

Personally, I don't think it would make any great difference to disable the USB port, which would be done in the BIOS, but (at first) it does sound as if that computer is trying to boot from the USB device - which you can change in the BIOS.

To access the BIOS you would (normally) need to press <DEL> just after the computer POSTs. You should be able to see the code when it does this, but often you need to be fairly prompt...

Once inside the BIOS you should (hopefully) be able to find where it gives the options for what to use, and which order to try them in... I can't say exactly where this menu is, but if you make changes you can always exit without saving, then go back in again anyway.

From my experiences, I normally use:
1) Floppy (if you have a floppy drive installed)
2) CD/DVD
3) HDD - this is the one you have to be careful about if you have multiple HDDs installed/attached...
4) USB - for just in case, but I often just leave it out of (or disable) this option.

With regards to the XP SP2 disk, I would try it - but choose the Repair option when prompted. This should allow you to repair the current installation, albeit possibly back to SP2 - but you can always just re-SP it...


Let us know how you get on....