how to access Dell pc restore

[SabreWolf3]

Hi,

My niece got a Dell laptop for college, Inspiron 6000. She went this past semester and let one of the "geeks" install an upgrade to Windows XP Pro onto her computer. Well, now we need the system back in its original state, and I can't seem to access the Dell PC restore utility. The manual that came with the computer is telling me to reboot the computer, and when the blue bar appears at the top of the screen with www.dell.com in it to hit Ctrl + F11. I don't see that blue bar on bootup anymore, I guess because of the XP Pro installation.

How can I access the Dell pc restore utility absent of this keyboard shortcut? I think it's on its own partition on the hard drive, but neither of the extra partitions has a drive letter.

Thanks.

 

[Scorpion]

Try pressing those key repeatedly during boot up. If that doesn't work try this. Go into BIOS (F2 I think), set it to boot from CD, then save and exit. Drop in the CD, and boot. That might work.

Scorp.