Member Avatar for sssmurphy

Hi and thanks in advance for any advice.
I am giving my old lap top to my kid and wanted to reformat before the transfer.
Yesterday I reformatted drive C but did not touch the partitions as there is nothing on them. Then today I tried to install XP but was unable. I spent a long time online with Dell Tech support and was told the Hard drive must be bad.
I insert the Dell OS disk, Turn on computer. Screen says "hit any key to boot from disk", I press key. Screen flashes some writing about checking settings or something, then goes black. Nothing else happens.
The Dell Tech Support ran diagnostics and no issues were noted. Hard drive tested fine. The computer was working prior to the reformat. I only reformatted to insure no confidential information was going to be handed to the kids who surf and download everything.
Any ideas....
I can get to a C: prompt if needed.

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A short, practical add-on that ties the thread together and helps future readers who hit the same “press any key to boot from CD” then go-black symptom.

ultimately fixed the machine by removing all partitions with a Linux tool, which let the XP installer proceed. Earlier suggestions from , and pointed toward checking how the drive was formatted and whether an OEM restore/hidden partition or partition table problem was involved. Below are concise, safe checks and an ordered troubleshooting workflow that will help narrow the cause and recover the system without needless guessing.

Quick checks to narrow the fault

  • Confirm the installer actually boots: after pressing any key you should see “Loading files…” or similar. If nothing appears, test the same CD/DVD on another PC or try a different known-good boot disc — this separates bad media/drive from installer problems.
  • If the disc boots but setup stalls, check BIOS/drive mode (SATA/AHCI vs IDE/Compatibility) and the optical-drive detection. Some installers hang or fail early when they cannot talk to the disk controller or the optical drive is flaky.
  • If you can reach a prompt (C:), the problem is likely partition/MBR related rather than a failing drive — deleting partitions or rewriting the MBR will often clear whatever was blocking setup, as the final post showed.

Safe, practical workflow (in order)

  1. Test the install media and the drive on another machine. Re-burn the disc at slow speed or create fresh bootable media.
  2. If media is good but installer won’t continue, try toggling SATA mode to Compatibility/IDE in BIOS (remember to change it back after a successful install if needed).
  3. If you accept wiping the disk, use a live environment (GParted/any Linux live) to remove partitions and recreate a single partition or to zero the partition table. Example destructive command (only if data is backed up and you understand it): 
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1

This erases the MBR/partition table and forces installers to treat the drive as blank.

Final notes
Always back up first and, with OEM machines, create recovery media before altering partitions. Deleting partitions is often the quickest fix for installer issues, but proceed deliberately: a bad burn, a flaky optical drive or wrong BIOS settings are common culprits and easier to fix than hardware replacement.

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Member Avatar for caperjack

Hi and thanks in advance for any advice.
I am giving my old lap top to my kid and wanted to reformat before the transfer.
.

what did you use to format the drive

Member Avatar for sssmurphy

I can't give you a step by step but I did use the operating disk and reformatted from within that program. But as I said earlier I only reformatted the C drive and didn't touch the other partitions. I think from the research I have done that I was supposed to delete the partitions and then reformat but I am not really sure that would affect the ability to reload XP.

Member Avatar for caperjack

I have done that I was supposed to delete the partitions and then reformat.

only if you waanted to ,how many partitions were there ,you should have been able to just format the partition and then just continue with the install if you used your winxo cd to format the drive

Member Avatar for sssmurphy

I think there were two partitions. So any idea why I get a black screen every time I try to reinstall XP or better yet any way I can get it to load. I have a hard time believing that that hard drive was fine before the reformat would suddenly go bad after the reformat. Thanks

Member Avatar for Bob_180_Bob

Hi,
Read your users manual for your Dell model (online if you don't have a copy) and see how to access the manufacturers setup to return the machine to default settings. Some Dell machines it is Ctrl + F11 on boot up.

Member Avatar for techsheaven

sssmurphy:

Bob_180_Bob seems to be leaning toward what I'm thinking. You deleted the "Active Partition." The partition you thought was empty, was probably your restore partition and the files hidden. If Bob's suggestion doesn't work, use fdisk or diskpart to set the restore partition as the active partition and reboot. It should start the restore process.

Probably an easier solution would be to delete all partitions, then the XP disk would "see" the Hard Drive as a new drive and start the install process. The down-side would be if there is something wrong with the XP Disk, you will be in a worse situation.

Since you are unable to boot with the disk, you may want to go to support.microsoft.com and search for instructions on Windows PE disk which has Diskpart. If you have a floppy drive, it would be easier to search the web for a win98 boot disk image; this has fdisk.

Confused? Try starting here: http://vlaurie.com/computers2/Articles/boot.htm (Again, if Bob's post doesn't work for you).

Member Avatar for sssmurphy

Well Bob's advice didn't work. I am now downloading the program to create the PE disk. Hopefully that will work. I was able to load Noppix but not quite sure what to do with it.

Member Avatar for sssmurphy

Hi All, Thanks for all the helpful ideas.
I ended up using a linux program to delete all the partitions on the hard drive and then Window XP loaded with no problems.

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