How do i reformat my laptop? Could i use my flashdrive?

Well, I guess what your friend meant is you have to rebuild it. Reformatting just wipes everything from your hard drive and formats the hard drive. This wouldn't help you at all, would it?

I don't know what operatiing system we are talking about but I assume some windows. You will need a device from which you can start your laptop. This can either be a CD rom or a Diskette Drive. I would assume a USB drive doesn't work. USB needs drivers installed, which happens after you start the operating system!

And please allow me one question: How do you want to install the operating system onto your laptop? It comes as CDs or DVDs!

If you'd ask me, a laptop without a CD drive is pretty much useless! If you say "Now i thought it would be fun to have one "then let me tell you, having a laptop without CD rom Drive isn't much fun at all!

You could try and fix the problem you have. Just tell us (or any other expert) what Laptop, what operating system and what the problem is. Error messages? Doesn't boot at all? etc.

Hope this helps a bit!

Cheers

Peter

thanks,

when i first got the laptop it had windows installed on it already. Also the CD drive worked, but for some weird reason it stopped working.

when i start it it goes to the loading windo xp screen then it finishes and a dark blue screen pops up and the computer restarts. i dont know if that helps.

i have tried starting it in safe mode etc. but nothing works.

for how long have you had your laptop?
If the CD-drive stops working this is something that should be repaired, otherwise as Peter said, it's going to be a lot less fun having the laptop.
Repairing it might be covered by the vendor if you do it within the two first years.
You still didn't mention which laptop is it? That would also be helpful for us to give you more specific advice...

i have had the laptop about a year i dont know anything about it b4 that though

i got the laptop off ebay so it has no insurance.

the laptop is an Acer travelmate 345te.

i think it might just be best to get the cd drive fixed and just fully restore it.

Just a tiny addition: I believe that some laptops actually do offer boot from USB (drivers integrated on motherboard). I couldn't find much info on the mentioned model though.

Check the BIOS of the laptop by booting it up and pressing <f2> or <del> (or whatever key combination is appropriate - this is usually displayed on the screen during boot)

Once in the BIOS there should be a number of different "tabs" to check, but look for something that would indicate the "boot order" of the system. It should give you options like CD-ROM, Hard Drive, Floppy Disk and, as jgivoni alluded to, there may be an option there for USB device.

If you have the USB option you have to ways to pursue this:

1) Buy/borrow an external USB CD-ROM drive, set the boot priority to USB device, and bring up the system from your OS installation disk.

2) Create a bootable USB flash drive. It's a pain in the a$$, but it can be done...and there's plenty of articles on google if you look for booting from a USB stick.

Here's a couple:
http://www.bootdisk.com/pendrive.htm
http://www.weethet.nl/english/hardware_b...

If you can't boot from USB due to motherboard limitations, you've still got a couple of options...

The best bet is going to be to try and buy a damaged 345te off of eBay and scavenge the CD drive out of it.

Second option would be to pull the drive out of the laptop, attach it to another computer either directly in the case or in an attached external enclosure, and then reinstall the OS onto that drive through the new "host" computer.

I hope this helps...

Ric

adjocama, please close this question and distribute the points.
If you didn't get a solution to your problem or you found it yourself, please leave a comment here to let the experts know.
Thanks,
Quomon Admin

The question has been closed.

Quomon Admin

The behavior described was what is known as the blue screen of death (BSOD). at boot time it's probably seen with a message IRQ not less or equal. anyway the easiest fix for this is run chkdsk /f. the real problem is when you can't boot to save mode to run this. then you have to take your windows XP cd and boot from that (I personally prefer PE disks) anyway, boot to the recovery console and run chkdsk /p and wait. if you receive more than 100 errors, you most likely have a failing hard drive.

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