hepl reformatting XP

Help I m back at the computer with the virus at my friends house.
How do you reformat Windows XP home ???
The virus is preventing us from making a dos particle disk (?)

 

try this

load the system from the disk, it should ask if you need to reformat.

 

Schamish, if you have the full version of windows XP home you don't need boot or particle discs. Your XP CD is bootable. All you have to do is go into your Bios, then CMOS and switch the bootup parameters like this: CDRom, IDE, Floppy A:. Now place your windows XP CD in your cdrom drive and reboot your computer. The computer should lock on to your XP CD with not problem. Just follow the instructions and format if you wish to reinstall your operating system.
You also don't need to worry about a virus infecting your XP CD, because since the CD is read only a virus cannot attach itself to it.

 

ya that is the long version.

 

f12 did it

The kind people at Dell told the "expert" (my 13 year old son
again) that to be able to reformat f12 was the key.
What a fun virus (Yaha.K worm) !!!
Whoever wrote it was really evil devious and thorough. Imagine if all that effort was put to good.