Reformatting X40

[geoleo3]

I bought my x40 from a friend recently, but I am starting to find that he had a lot of viruses on this computer that I didn't recognize before. Is there a way to reformat the X40 since it doesn't have a CD Rom? I have an external one, but I don't know if that will work. Please let me know if there's a way to reformat it. Thank you all!!

[pianowizard]

If the recovery partition is still intact, you can restore the HDD to factory settings. If not, yes, you can boot from an external optical drive and reinstall Windows. Both approaches will erase everything on the HDD.

[geoleo3]

cool i don't have the orignal CDs, and have never done a reformatting before, can you walk me through how to do it using the external? Thanks so much.

[pianowizard]

I no longer have my X40 (sold it two months ago) so I can only describe the process in general terms. Plug in the USB drive with the Windows CD in it. Power up the computer to see if it reads from the CD and says "Press any key to boot from CD". If it does that, then you are all set. If not, you need to do the following. Turn off the X40, then turn it on again. As soon as it starts powering up, get into the BIOS by pressing "F2" multiple times, like once per second. Within the BIOS, change the startup sequence so that it looks for either a USB device or CD drive (I forget what it says exactly) before accessing the hard drive. Then save the new setting and restart the machine. This time it should be able to boot from the USB drive.