dell dimension 4300s

I was recently given a dell mimension 4300s tower and was told i would just need to reformat the hard drive, well i dont have the discs to do so and was wondering if there is a way that i can reformat this thing with out the discs. i have tried <ctrl> and F11 at startup and other various things to no avail. any help or suggestions would be greatly appreicated.

 

washopping that i would be able to do a pc restore with out a disc like some pcs have. basicly set it back like it was when it was bought. but i dont have that luck. lol. question, if i go out and buy a new windows xp disc would that get the system working?

 

i was told that the operating system has some files missing. if that helps any.

 

im just gonna go with windows xp like was origianly on the system, and i prefer that over vista any way. Thank you for the advice:-D

 

im not sure about the specs, i wish i knew more about pc's lol

 

i will do so for sure. thank you.

 

If you have the name of the previous owner, and the Service Tag number from the Dimension, contact Dell via their Chat.

Explain to them you have taken ownership of this PC, and normally they will send you the XP discs for free. Just pay shipping.

Hope that helps.

 

And welcome to Major geeks, parachick.

 

Thanks for the advice guys, i tried to talk with people from dell and got a major run around:banghead so now i have a new question. what other operating system witll the dimension 4300s support? i have been looking online for hours trying to find where i can buy a copy of windows xp and im just about pulling my hair out. lol

 

Here's a link to manuals and support for Dimension 4300s
http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/dim4300s/index.htm

That computer supports windows 2000 and XP from what I read.

 

thank you

 

Also you could try eBay.
Have bought quite a bit from there.

 

After reviewing the specs, I would not even try to run Vista on this machine.

It's maximum SDRAM memory capacity is 512MB.

Even with AVG as your anti-virus, it would still hamper the speed of this PC, running XP SP3 (service pack 3).

This PC is around seven years old.

I'm actually surprised at Dell. Whenver I deal with them to obtain software for recovered PCs, I give them the service tag, and the name of the previous owner, and have no issue getting an XP disc for that PC. The great thing about a Dell disc, is that it is simply an XP disc. As long as you have a valid COA (license key) from the label on the PC, you have a valid copy of Windows on machine x.

 

to mekanic


Crucial shows as 1GB.

http://www.crucial.com/upgrade/compatible-memory-for/Dell/Dimension 4300 Systems/list.html

 

Dell specifies 512MB.

Usually with a Dell, the Service Tag determines which motherboard, and CPU it was shipped with.

Frequently, multiple motherboards will be used on the same model of Dimension. There are at least five diferent CPUs this PC could have been shipped with.

If Crucial says 1GB, I'd usually trust them, but I'd do a scan first.

 

well an update on the dell dimension 4300s, my husband got a copy of xp from a friends of his that workds on pc's. i tried to run it, every thing was going fine until several files were not able to be copied to the computer. the instillation stopped and every time i try now i get a blue stop screen stating windows was closed to protect the computer from damage. at this point im going to bring the computer to someone else to get it going.

 

im thinking maybe a new hard drive?