You are very welcome.  Best of luck to you, and best wishes for a Happy New Year!  
Good day.  I have a dimension 8300 with windows xp pro.  My computer was recently attacked and ended up with the blue screen of death.  I had a friend look at it and he brought it back to life.  Although some things like task manager didn't work and being slower than a rock, it is working.  Unable to do a system restore, I decided to reinstall the windows os.  After much pain, I have removed my files, pics and tunes.  After some lite reading I decided to try the PC restore for windows xp. When I get to step 3.   When the Dell splash screen appears during the computer startup process, press and hold and then press . Then, release both keys at the same time. I get no response and the computer just goes ahead and starts up.  I have tried 10+ times.  I then figured  the key strokes are not working or you do not have PC Restore any more. You will have to do a manual reinstall.   I have tried the manual restore again with no luck  I am now stuck @ step 4. reinstall windows os from the setup disk.  I try  to Insert the Windows XP CD into the CD drive, and then restart your computer. If the message Press any key to boot from the CD... appears, press a key to continue booting to the CD. No message, no booting.  Then       Power on the system and watch for the Dell logo to appear.  2    When the Dell logo appears, press the key to load the Boot Menu. If the menu does not appear, restart the system and tap several times at the Dell logo screen.  3    When the Boot Menu appears, highlight the CD/DVD drive (listed as "CDROM", "CD/DVD" or "CD/DVD/CD-RW") entry from the list and press .  At the Boot Menu, I get  IDE CD-ROM DEVICE.  I highlight it and press enter and the computer just starts up and I end up at the desktop.  I have tried the How to configure a dell dimension computer to start up from a CD or DVD.  Again I tried      Press the until you highlight CD-ROM/DVD-ROM Drive.  Press . Your computer will now boot to the CD in the drive.   It will not boot from the CD in drive D or E so I try Restart , press F2 and make sure the BIOS is set for CD ROM First.  I have even set it with Diskette drive and Hard drive unchecked and it will still not boot from CD.  Now with the other options unchecked, I get  No Boot device available.  I have the original OS disk that came with my computer.   What should be my next step?    Thanks, Dan F.       I
Can't reinstall windows xp from CD