Try booting into the bios settings. hit del, or f1 or f2 as computer restarts (try all) look for boot sequence & see if it can be changed to external drives

if you're not in need of win 98, use the ranish partition manager which can be downloaded free online and delete the fat partition then change the boot on line one to standard & hit f2 & reboot.

just for giggles try holding down the c button while booting up, with a bootable disk in it

I've bought 2 Dells recently & they do not give you all the drivers, just some. Some may need to be redownloaded.

Dell has your driver available for any modern windows operating system,you just have to login to your account at their website to get to it.

There are many things that can cause that to occur. Try using system restore & go back to a date just before it happened. If You can remember what you may have done just before it happened then you...

I agree, the partition deleting and repartitioning is always a good idea before a format. If while you are trying to install & it has a hard time copying, try installing using another cd drive. Also,...

Also a bad cdrom drive can cause install problems as well.

you can get XP online at pricegrabber.com for not much over fifty bucks

If you tried formatting from dos & it didn't work cause maybe you have an ntfs partition & you are trying to format with a FAT format disk. Do a web search on Ultimate boot disk or ultimate boot cd....

it may not have copied all the files. stick the cd & try booting off that & reloading windows. you may have to change settings in the cmos to be able to boot from a cd

No guarantees, but try startup control panel. you can download it from download.com

If nobody else will help, then I'd take it at a loss & reinstall your operating system

I'd try uninstalling Norton & go to www.free-av.com & download the free antivirus & see what it finds. if you have to create another user to get things working right, that is fine.

It's possibly a virus that has outsmarted your antivirus software, or accidental changing of system settings.there is a setting from right clicking on the desktop that hides your icons, the taskbar...

Sounds like it failed to copy all files or the setup got cut off prematurely. try booting off the xp cd to rerun setup.

I guess people don't like to hear the truth... If you do not have an older version of Windows (EX: Win95, Win98, win 2000 etc) then you can do nothing with the upgrade cd. Look on Ebay & just buy an...

download the Sun java 2 & reinstall it & see if it cures it.

go to microsofts website & contact them via phone & they can help you do it manually. It's Free

some new computers will let you boot thru the usb, but it is usually an external hard drive. a Pen drive wouldn't have enough space to hold the operating system unless of course we are going to use a...

It should work very easily, especially if you installed a network printer on the client computers. If you have problems it could be something in the printer preferences on the client computer, but...

He's very right. borrow somebody's disk, but be sure it's the same version.

I guess when you are used to starting from scratch you are always prepared for it & have everything backed up & on as few disks as possible. Recovery can take me a mere half a day to get things back...

nothing indicated all that info in the original post.

Yes it is the easy answer. why get headaches when it can be simple...

Install both microsoft java vm & Sun Java 2 & I'm sure it'll be cured

Very good possibility, probably not a good ground, if any.

don't know for sure if it'll solve the problem or not, go to www.download.com & download Opera Java & during setup choose yes Install Java & it may work.

They probably figure that hackers will give up on the poor guy that has a 10 year old computer anyhow, i reckon

Virus makers are smarter than your antivirus software, especially if you don't subscribe to the latest updates. If you don't want to pay money, go to www.free-av.com. Uninstall Norton & download the...

I'd just take it at a loss & just Format & start from scratch.

Sounds like a virus. easiest thing to do is format & reinstall Windows, or you can probably right click on the icon & choose OPEN

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

Try that cd, it has many useful tools. if that doesn't work, then i'd suggest downloading linux Mandriva for a backup O.S. until you can purchase a new copy of XP....

A customer of mine is dealing with the same problem right now. at first we thought he was cursed, because the computer works fine here at my shop, but acts up at his house.

Found out he was...

Should have tried Suse 9.1 personal ed, it is better.
There are ways to set the cmos settings to not go into such great detail when booting. just gotta tinker a little bit.

i've found it easier to dual boot on just one hard drive, than 2. i think you just want to access your old XP system to try to repair it later, sounds like you're bored.

I would get everybody to save everything & Format & reinstall Windows fresh & new. Problem solved swiftly.

I know what you're saying. Sometimes computers are aggravating.

here's a free antivirus http://www.free-av.com
I'm not sure of the exact temp, but if the motherboard feels pretty warm, try adding an extra case fan or something. I do not like the idea of trying...

usually a bad cd drive will get this problem. You can sometimes trick a bad cd drive by making a temporary cd copy & trading disks thru the instalation process.

most likely a virus, however it could also be spyware, or even software bugs