Originally Posted by purplecatty

You can call Dell and ask for Restoration CD for his Dell laptop. It doesn't cost much. More likely less than $20 to $30 bucks. All you need to provide model and Service Tag number so that Dell can provide correct CD that have driver works for your friend's computer.

I did that to my friend's HP laptop. I ordered a replacment Restoration CD and cost him $19 (Windows XP with correct driver for his laptop). I restore his XP in no time.

Which you prefer, dance around trying to write his hdd or just order replacement Restoration CD and install it. Can be re-use when his computer got hit with virus again. less the headache??

Lastly, Once OS is restored along with correct driver, Try Acronis Trueimage or Norton Ghost so he can have his system up and running in no time (between 15 to 30 min) if the virus hit again..

Lastly, Did you reformat entire hdd or not?? If you have not. Try reboot the computer and watch the BIOS splashscreen and see if you catch "Restoration- hit F10" (It'll come by in 2-3 seconds) If you don't see any, On Dell system, usually CTL-F12 to enter Restoration. Not all Dell have it. Sometime if you boot up and BIOS splashscreen show then next a blue line on top of monitor screen with "Dell" inside the middle show for few seconds before XP splashscreen show up. If you see Blue line show, it's time to hit CTL-F12 quickly before it disappears. If not work, try CTL-F11 or CTL-F10. Just play around until you got in. IF not then hdd did not have "hidden" partition that store XP Restoration. It's basically a Dell re-named Norton Ghost..

Give me his Computer model and Service Tag. I can look it up and see if it have Restore function.

Catty