when you are booting press f12 then select cd...

 

out of the blue this just happened, or did you make some changes to your system, new drive, etc??

 

do you have a windows xp cd that you can boot into the recovery console? 

 

This pretty much just happened out of the blue. I haven't added anything new. The system has been running really slow for a long time though. I've been wondering if the hard drive was starting to go. I do have a windows cd.

Thanks 

When I hit F12 and select ide cd-rom device it says: strike the f1 key to continue, F2 to run the setup utility. I already have the boot sequence set to boot from the cd rom but it doesn't happen. If I hit F1 it tries to start in windows.

I finally got it to boot to the cd rom so I decided to reformat the hard drive. It was about 95% done when a blue screen appeared:

 

partmgr.sys

 

Technical information

stop: 0x000000ce(0xF7AB9667,0x000000000,oxF7AB9667,0x000000000)

 

partmgr.sys

 

Not sure if this will help.

 Thanks

I would have tried to rebuild your boot.ini and mbr first, but since you already decided to reformat, do you have the Dell restore cd's that came with your XPS?  I hope you had any important data backed up. I am not sure if your drive is bad or not until you run some diagnostics on it, but if it is 5yr old, then you may just want to get a new one before going through the trouble of a fresh install, as new drives are cheap and probably much larger than your original drive. 

Thank for your help. I'll order a new today. I may need some guidance with the installation.

Thanks again xcator.