Help with a Dell Inspiron 1100 with XP

jamie1123

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Apr 27, 2014
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Had a friend of mine at work give me his old laptop for my 10 year old. It is, as the title says a Dell Inspiron 1100.

He wiped the hard drive of his info, no big deal!! But, when I got it home and powered it won't do anything. The Dell logo comes up, than the Windows XP logo, than nothing.Just a black screen. I got it to start in safe mode once, I think, but, the screen was about 4 inches wide in the middle of the screen. But, now I can't get it to do that.

Any help is greatly appreciated!!!

Thanks, Jamie
 
Solution
It seems that your friend wiped more that his info.
There is a chance this Dell has an intact recovery partition, check on support.dell.com (with tag number) for manuals and software. As a final resort, you might have to order recovery media and install it fresh. You can also ask your friend whether he does not keep any CDs from it.

Edit: Just looked over the spec for 1100. It was released in 2003, meaning it should had XP installed. With XP out of support, I am not sure whether you will be able to get all the updates, and for sure you will need good antivirus for it (handing it over to 10yo).
It seems that your friend wiped more that his info.
There is a chance this Dell has an intact recovery partition, check on support.dell.com (with tag number) for manuals and software. As a final resort, you might have to order recovery media and install it fresh. You can also ask your friend whether he does not keep any CDs from it.

Edit: Just looked over the spec for 1100. It was released in 2003, meaning it should had XP installed. With XP out of support, I am not sure whether you will be able to get all the updates, and for sure you will need good antivirus for it (handing it over to 10yo).
 
Solution