Formatting in xp

I was going to reformat my buddies dell computer today, and I was having a little trouble. I went into bios and selected the CD-Rom as the primary boot drive, but when it comes up as "Hit any key to boot from disc" I mash the keys together and it won't load from the disc. They keyboard works as soon as I get into windows so i know that isn't the issue. If you know how to fix this or have otherway to format with only one hard drive (like from dos and such) let me know.

Thanks

What kind of keyboard is it?

I've known some USB keyboards to refuse to work at all until Windows has begun loading. There might be an option in the BIOS utility to enable "USB DOS Support" or however it's worded in your particular case.

Or, you could try a PS/2 keyboard.

if you can't format it from here, go to windows and format it from there by running the setup in windows environment

It's also the reason I keep a ps2 keyboard on the workbench. My USB works great, except there's one spot when loading Windows to a RAID drive you have to answer a stupid question and it's between driver loads, a real pain in the *ss.

mrgreenjeans said:

It's also the reason I keep a ps2 keyboard on the workbench. My USB works great, except there's one spot when loading Windows to a RAID drive you have to answer a stupid question and it's between driver loads, a real pain in the *ss.

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Why not use a USB to PS2 adapter? They come with most USB keyboards and mice.

good old fasion boot disk

lol, agreed