XP reformat help needed

I have a bad XP on my E-machine. I can get as far as the welcome screen but no user accounts will load. It says ...loading, saving settings...then right back to the welcome screen. I would love to reload XP and just reformat the disk....however....my CD R/W doesn't read either.

If I install another CD rom drive will I be able to get windows to reload by starting my CPU with the XP disc in at start-up?

I really hate to spend $30 plus on a new CD Rom and have it do nothing either. Or do I need to hook up the drive to a CPU that has a working CD drive in order to reformat? It would seem like there is an easy answer but I don't have enough expertise to know.

Thanks

Deb

 

Is the CD drive not working because of a Windows issue or a hardware issue? If you put the XP install CD in the drive and configure the BIOS to check the CD drive for a boot record, you can check if the install proceedure will work without actually performing it (just opt to boot from the hard disk rather than the CD when the menu comes up)

 

There isn't a boot record for the CD drive. It had stopped working a little while ago and I don't know why it stopped reading discs. It's only a little over a year old. I was able to pull up BIOS to check for a boot record, neither cd or floppy had one.

Thanks and I hope I made some sense.

Deb

 

Is this XP disk the one that came with the PC? Is it the restore disk? If so, then yes, a working CDROM will reinstall everything like the day you took it out of the box.

 

I'd check the cables on the CD drive (verify they're there and reseat them). Does the drive still open when you press the button? Also, if you have an audio cable run from the drive to your soundcard (2 or 3 wire connector mounted either by the jumpers or the ribbon cable on the back of the drive) and a play button (it would be a second button next to the eject button) you can try to play an audio CD in the drive independant of the operating system to verify that the drive is still mostly functional.

 

The CD does open and close but no audio when a cd is in. I was able to find boot disc info to boot from a floppy drive. I just need some new floppies--takes 6--to try this.

Thanks