Reformatting a Dell Dimension 4600...

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cjv998

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Dec 3, 2006
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Hi everyone, I volunteered to reformat my parents' Dell Dimension 4600 desktop over my Thanksgiving break, because they've been complaining that it's running slow, and they've had it 3-4 years now, so I figure it's overdue (WinXP Home is installed). I assumed they had a standard restore disc with a copy of Windows, but they don't seem to. They have OEM Dell discs with drivers and manuals, and there's a hidden partition of the hard drive you can boot to with hardware diagnostic stuff, but I didn't see anything about reformatting in there. I admittedly only glanced over it, so maybe I missed it. Has anyone had to reformat one of these before, or does anyone have any thoughts as to how I should go about this?

I can back everything up with an external DVD burner they bought (their idea, not mine), and I've reformatted my own computer two or three times before, so I'm familiar with the process and what's involved.
 
The 4600 comes with the XP OS disc that is usually Purple, Green, or Maroon in color. It is supposed to be with your Applications and Drivers discs. If not..if you have an OEM XP Home CD that should work fine with the CD Key that is on a label located on the side of the Dell.

Maybe consider alternatives to reformatting. Has the memory ever been upgraded? Have you turned the Hard Drive Acoustic Mode in the Dell BIOS to "Performance"? <---- That will probably speed things up DRAMATICALLY.
 
I actually had a few of those dells... it came with oem dell windows xp discs though. Infact, every dell I have come across (from back then) came with os discs. Are you sure they never recieved one? I remember the driver discs being blue while the os disc was purple (sp2) or burgandy (sp1 or earlier) ... hope that helps.
 
Thanks guys. The memory has been upgraded (I suggested it one or two years ago, it now has 512 or 768MB, can't remember which). I wasn't aware of the hard drive setting in the BIOS though. I'll definitely have to look into that when I go home next, along with figuring out what happened to the Windows restore disc. Is it still the same half-white pattern as the driver discs, or is it solid-colored (all purple or burgandy)?
 
The driver CDs are usually blue and white. All of the drivers are on support.dell.com though. Some of them are updates so I would just download them from there and stick them on a blank CD or flash drive.
 
I found some pictures of the restore discs, so I know what I'm looking for. That's a good point about downloading the most recent drivers, and putting stuff on my flash drive instead of wasting a CD on it.

I remember we had 4-5 of the blue and white driver CDs all together in our CD tower, but I didn't see the maroon Windows restore CD. Hopefully it didn't get thrown out. I can hear it now, "What's this CD for? We already have Windows on the computer, surely we don't need this..."

My parents were going to take the computer to Best Buy and pay the Geek Squad to reformat it, which I bet is pricey. I see no reason to waste money on this, because I can do it perfectly fine myself...provided they have the Windows restore CD.
 
Thanks Brad, I actually didn't notice I had received a pm. Anyway, that link should come in handy if I can't find the restore CD.
 
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