how to erase hard drive and reload win xp

Hi, I’m new to computers atleast for this task, hence need you guys help. I have a very old Dell Solo 9550 laptop running with Widows 98. It has huge unwanted data and scrap which is eating up the hard drive space. Also there are several useless softwares and applications installed in Windows. Now what I want to do is wipe out the hard drive completely and install fresh Windows XP. As I said I am new, I am looking for a step by step procedure for doing the same. Can anyone please provide me the same or any webpage with that procedure? Help appreciated.

As you said the laptop was running with Windows 98 and now you want to install Windows XP, hope you have the installation disc for the same. If not, buy one Windows XP Media CD from Microsoft with Product key. Apart from this you will also require the drivers Disc which probably you might have got with your laptop at the time of purchase.

Once ready, insert the disc in the CD/DVD drive, restart the computer, enter Bios. Change the boot order to boot from CD as first device. Save Bios and restart. Now it will boot from CD and installation will Start. Follow the onscreen instructions. At a stage you will see a window asking for partition to install XP. Here first delete all partitions and create one new. This will be named C automatically. Press enter to install the windows on this partition.

Once installation is completed (it will take probably 30 minutes) insert Driver CD and install all required drivers. That’s it.