Page 1 of going back to factory settings on packard bell p.c..............er how??

ok so my p.c is around 5 yrs old, its a packard bell running windows xp.

i have followed the instructions on the manual which claims that i have some kind of hidden partition on the hard drive that will allow me to wipe the p.c clean and restore it to how i had it the first day of purchase.

so i have backed everything up and have followed the instructions to make 3 master cds from the partition on my hard drive.

i placed the 1st cd in the drive and then restarted the p.c and what is supposed to happen is that a menu comes up that gives me the option to reset the p.c to the first day i had it, but instead the p.c continues to load up windows xp and although the c.d can be heard spinning its completely ignored.

any ideas? there was no backup software with the p.c as its all supposed to be on the hard drive and now on these cds but i dont want to just reformat because im not sure if i will be able to get windows back on again.

so, humuer me, i know you allready went though this, but bear with me :)

firstly, this insidious partition has indeed been there since you bought the machine, this is the way some more penney pinching "economy" (ie, fly by night,,eco pc`s,, (sorry) give you a valid copy of you operating system without actually giving you the "Physical" didsc, because this way is cheaper & faster for the company, but s*** for the end user (unless you dump it to disc asap & reclaim the HD space back :)


first thing to check, is the bios set to boot from the cd first ? easy enough to find out, as it`ll ask you to press a key etc during the boot stage, ignoring this makes windows boot normaly.

if it`s not set right, go into your Motherboards Bios screen (uisuelly pressing dellite at the post screen does this, but occasionaly it`s F2 instead

the bootload order menu is easy to find & use, just set it to boot fist device = cdd0 & second = ideo, & set the "use other devise tab, & change it to "yes"

if that disne work, it could de dodgy disc`s or dodgy partition. try burning the disc on cd/rw or dvd/rw & at a very slow speed, ie. 2x

lemme know if you get stuck, & sorry for the awfull grammer & spelling, i`m kinda wasted at the moment lol :)