How to reformat a Netbook? (Dell Mini 10v)

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fattty

New Member
Hey guys,
I have a Dell Mini 10v netbook that I am looking to sell. I put it up for auction on eBay which ends in about 30 hours. Before I ship it off, How do I reformat it and ERASE ALL information on it and return it to the factory windows xp?

Thanks!
-Tim :)
 
johnb35

johnb35

Administrator
Staff member
You should have gotten a reinstallation cd when you bought it. You boot to it, format the drive and reinstall windows. Oh, wait, you said netbook, most likely you have a recovery partition. Look in your manual on how to reinstall windows.
 
tremmor

tremmor

Well-Known Member
i got in the mail yesterday for my birthday today. it was an Asus Eee and surprised it had a installation cd for windows home and all the drivers.
 
F

fattty

New Member
I have the CD's, but no cd drive or external drive. Could you give me more details about the recovery partition?
I will look for the manual when i have time. Thanks!
 
tremmor

tremmor

Well-Known Member
you can goto explorer and look for another partition like c: and d:. If you right click the drive and look at the properties you will see the size of the drive. example is mine says 157 gig. Yes its a 160 gig and no partition. Yesterday i also bought a slim dvd burner. not to many ways around it. if ya have the recovery disc and drivers i doubt its also on a partition.
 
tremmor

tremmor

Well-Known Member
they had some readers only and not slim line. Not a biggie. just what ya need for something like $39.00 as an external. reader only.
might have been office depot or bestbuy. don't remember. will i use a netbook for burning. No......i don't think. One thing i liked it got the power from usb. no power supply and worked fine. only criteria was it had to be minimum of usb2. did require the power supply or at least suggested for my netbook. worked well but only 8 speed. No biggie.
cheers.....

even supported writing light scribe.
kind of useless though.
 
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F

fattty

New Member
So right now, no other way than to get an external drive? How about booting to flash drive, or even easier,
How dangerous would it be if i uninstalled all programs and deleted all files that i have?
 
tremmor

tremmor

Well-Known Member
Im not sure cause i never had a laptop long enough to try a wipe and install with usb. my kids always got the laptop 1st. I suspect by morning someone will reply. Im only guessing. Lots of boot devices for usb support in dos mode. Maybe an operating system on the usb could be slipstreamed. interesting though. we will see who replies. You did say you had to wipe and reinstall the operating wiped clean before selling. i will watch who replies.

I would think a boot device that would initiate the usb would be good. and the operating system was installed on the usb device. Just a copy of the cd to the usb and boot from there. its just another drive. Im just guessing though. never tried it. have towers only now and a netbook.
 
PCwhoop

PCwhoop

banned
try the following: first the F8 key to get into the starting advanced options, and choose the option (Repair the system) to get into the program that recover the complete system to the factory initial configurations. It works with dell laptops,
 
F

fattty

New Member
I pressed f8, nothing happened. Neither did pressing any other f(x) button work. It just went straight to the xp loading screen. o.0? I need to ship out my netbook by tuesday afternoon at the latest so I am in desperate need of reformating!
 
FunnelWeb

FunnelWeb

New Member
Try Fn + F11 immediately after you start the laptop.

or after the post right before the OS starts loading there is a screen with a blue bar at the top you can push ctrl+f11 to get the restore to launch

hope this helps
 
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F

fattty

New Member
No blue bar. All i see is a circle with dell for about .5 seconds and bottom right corner says f2 setup and f11 or f12 something else. I press all the combinations of ctrl, fn, and f(x) i can, but still nothing happens. D:
 
F

fattty

New Member
I was thinking, since i haven't put in credit card numbers on this netbook, could i just right click the C: drive and click format?
What does this erase?
Will all installed programs still be there?
Will someone be able to retrieve passwords, etc.
How safe is this?
What other way can i wipe my hard drive clean instead of reformating?
 
johnb35

johnb35

Administrator
Staff member
You can't format your windows drive while inside windows, it won't let you. To be sure everything is off the hard drive you would have to reformat.
 
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