i brought a dell optiplex form ebay

[james_]

it runs on xp pro, id'e basicly like to format it. it didnt come with any disks is evrything i need on the hard drive.

[Buenchico]

Er...no!

The only operating system you've got is the pre-installed version of XP on the hard drive. You can't copy that to anywhere so, if you format the drive you'll have no operating system which will effectively render the PC useless.

Without an operating system on disk, you can't really move forward. (You can, of course, continue to use the existing installation of XP but if, or more likely 'when', something goes wrong, you won't be able to do anything about it).

If you definitely need to run Windows software, then you'll have to get hold of a Windows XP Home. (The Pro version has nothing extra to offer the average personal user). The only cheaper alternatives will be to get hold of an earlier version of Windows (which might be fine if you don't need to run the latest Windows software) or to install Linux from one of the cover-mount DVD's which have recently been issued by several magazines. (You can download these but, even on broadband, they're really massive downloads).

Chris

[commoner]

........Hi james....

Everything from the OS disk could be located on a hard drive recovery partition. This has been going on for a while but is now becoming the norm.

With HP or Compaq you access recovery on restart by hitting the F10 key. You can recover applications, drivers, and the operating system to their factory shipped condition. You will need to reinstall and reconfigure any application that you installed, but it will not delete data files in its
normal default mode.

Some Gateway computers also have a Recovery partition. Just hit F11 at startup.

Dell, Acer, and Sony are also going the hidden partition route. Check your manual or Help screen to find out how to access. Try typing in "Recovery Partition" and see what the results are.

In addition, you may be able to create one set of OS disks from the recovery partition. Again, each manufacturer has a different method, but if you go to Help and type in "Recovery" you should find something about creating a CD in the results.

..............I have a Compaq Pesario which is like this.......commoner.