How to reboot windows xp without cd

Cancel Submit. Bill Smithers Volunteer Moderator. You may or may not have a manufacturer's recovery partition imaged onto your hard drive to do what you want to do if XP came preinstalled Acer, Dell, HP, etc. How satisfied are you with this reply? Thanks for your feedback, it helps us improve the site.

Hi Charlie, You don't, at least not without the installation media. What problem are you having that brings you to want to try a "Factory Reset" of XP? That's called factory resetting which is what you asked about. And you still can get the updates and Service Packs up until when support ended for XP. Table of contents 1. The computer should now be turned on. Type rstrui. You can access the Power button in the lower right corner of the screen from the login screen.

You will be taken to the troubleshooting option screen after the computer restarts. Your computer now has the option to be reset or refreshed. Next, click the Next button. You can get started by selecting Reset this PC. You can remove everything by selecting this option. You can remove my files from this computer by selecting Just remove my files… The reset process can be completed by following the instructions on screen.

Related Articles. Part 1. Back up your files. Since you'll be reinstalling the operating system, there's a good chance that you'll lose your saved files in the process. Creating a backup file will ensure that you can restore the files at any time. After backing up your files, you'll need to move the backup file to an external location e. Find your product key. The product key is a character code. It's usually located on a sticker that's on the bottom of the computer laptops , the back of the CPU tower desktops , or inside of the Windows XP box.

If you can't find your product key sticker, you can try using ProduKey to retrieve your computer's product key. Click Start. It's a green button in the bottom-left corner of the screen. Click My Computer.

This monitor-shaped option is in the upper-right side of the Start window. Doing so will open the My Computer folder. Enable viewing for hidden files and folders. To do so: [1] X Research source Click the Tools tab in the top-left side of the window. Click Folder Options Click the View tab. Check the "Show hidden files and folders" circle. Click Apply , then click OK.

Double-click Local Disk. If there are multiple Local Disk options, make sure that you double-click the C: drive. Double-click the Windows folder.

This will open the Windows folder. Double-click the i folder. You may have to scroll down to find this option. Find the "winnt Doing so will launch the Windows XP setup process.

Wait for the setup window to appear. Depending on how fast your computer is and which programs were open when you double-clicked winnt Once the setup window appears, you may proceed with reinstalling Windows XP. Part 2. This will initiate the setup. Press the "I agree" key. At the bottom of the screen, you'll see a key e. Press the "Don't Repair" key. You'll see this listed at the bottom of the screen.

The "Don't Repair" key is usually Esc. Delete your current XP installation. Select the NTFS hard drive option using the arrow keys, then press the "Delete" key usually D that's listed at the bottom of the screen. This will indicate to Windows that you want to delete the selected installation.

Press L when prompted. Doing so erases the hard drive and returns you to the installation menu. This will select your computer's hard drive as the installation point. Format your computer's hard drive. Doing so will set up the hard drive for a Windows installation. This process will take several minutes to an hour depending on your hard drive's size.