[hard drive] Dell Dimension 2400 -I format it &screwed it up

I have a friend that wanted to format and install xp pro on their Dell Dimension 2400 and asked me to help, it was working fine, but was getting very slow and had all kinds of games and kids programs that she didn't want on there anymore.

I didn't know that this Dell 2400 had an System Recovery Partition, and all i had to do was push F12 and do it through there without using a cd and everything would have been fine. But I jumped the gun and un-partitioned the existing 3 partitions, created 1 partition and formatted it on another computer as a slave so I could access it because it was being uncooperative on the dell.

Well now i thought everything should be fine I'll just put it back in the dell and set bios to CD-Rom and load xp up, but it's not letting me.

It just gives me the message 'strike f1 to retry boot, f2 for setup utility'
Also if i try to use the f12 menu (that I should have used #5 in the first place before formatting it)
1. Normal
2. Hard-Disk Drive C:
3. System Setup
4. IDE Drive Diagnostics
5. Boot to Utility Partition
it gives me the same error message 'strike f1 to retry boot, f2 for setup utility'

I have set BIOS to boot from CD first & Floppy first and it doesn't want to do either it just give me the same error message.

To sum up, since formating it, it seems like the motherboard or something has a built in Dell program wanting only to use the recovery partition so it doesn't let a fresh install any other way. But there has to be a way!? I've looked around the internet and several forums and couldn't find someone answered this problem before so I praying someone can help me here. If you need more info let me know.

Thanks

 

I don't know if it will work but these are directions for manually reinstalling XP
http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/dsn/en/document?docid=179256

You may have to contact Dell and purchase a restore/recovery CD since you wiped the partition.

Here's the directions to boot from a CD if it didn't appear in the F12 menu
http://support.dell.com/support/top...pe=&os=&component=&lang=&doclang=&toggle=&dl=

 

According to this article
http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/dsn/en/document?docid=181316
the keys to press and hold are ctrl+ F11.
Have you tried that?

 

You can install XP Prow/Home provide the COA on the case is there. Any xp disk can be booted from, re-format the drive in the pc that it will be used in. Its pretty straight forward, except after the install you might have to go to Dell web site an download drivers, If you cant pass windows validation you will have to go to other options an type your COA number in. I do this all the time