Reformat...

Did you do the reformat yourself 18 months ago? You said, "It came back", as if it was done elsewhere, in a repair shop, etc.

Reformat does that. It reformats the hard disk and wipes it clean. There is another option to "Repair Install". This attempts to replace damaged system files without wiping the whole hard disk clean. Perhaps that is what you did 18 months ago?

You say you have the XP CD, but where is the Drivers CD? Your display problem sounds like you haven't finished installing all the drivers yet, like the video drivers.

Mark

done a restore the first time if everything came back. This time he did a format.

We need information on exactly what you did, what CDs did you use the first time, and exactly what you did the second time? A format will destroy everything. A restore puts it back like day one. Big difference.

and need to do so. You can locate the drivers by making use of your Service Tag number on Dell's support site.

What I would really suggest though is to FIRST copy any data files (letters, emails, pictures, music, etc.) that you might have onto a CD or Flash Drive then see if you can still make use of Dell's image recovery. It should still be available unless you selected to remove partitions when installing.

You can find out if it is still there by rebooting and pressing the Ctrl+F11 keys AT THE SAME TIME when the blue Dell band appears and then all you have to do is follow the prompts. If the recovery partition is still there you will have everything just as it came from Dell but if not you will indeed have to download all the necessary drivers for your model using the Service Tag.