PCA Forums

I've got an older 2000 something Dell Inspirion 8000 laptop, that was in a large office for the past couple years, so it was set up to be docked and in a large network. I brought it back to my house and tried to get it working here, but i couldnt get it working with the network. Something happened now and I cant even log into it. It's got Windows 2000 on it, so I figured I'd just install XP Pro and format the drive. So I went into the BIOS and changed the boot order so the CD drive is first and then put the CD in and restarted it. It jus went straight to the log in screen and did not seem to find the CD there. Since I can't log in, and I can't get it to boot from the CD drive for some reason, so I'm wondering if anyone has any ideas for me.

Thanks,
Mullen

Could it be the cd drive was disabled when it was on the old network? We disable our cdrom's on our network to keep people from putting stuff on the computer that is not authorized.

Press F12 or F8 on bootup (Dell BIOS screen) and it should bring up a boot menu.

is the xp cd a retail disc? reason i ask is because if not, it may not be a bootable cd.



also, when you get to the win 2000 boot screen, are you trying to log onto "this computer" account in windows, or a windows domain?

In some cases you have to use the boot menu as Busby specified, at times it just skips the cd check even if set.