PC Won't Load Windows

The orange light on the motherboard is normal. AS for not loading try seeing if you can boot into safe mode. Tap the F8 key when you see the Dell splash screen. Then select Safe mode and see if it will load.

If you can't boot into Safemode I hope you made the recovery DVDs and have file backups because you're going to have to:

1.) boot to the recovery DVD with the windows 7 installer and then select "repair your computer" then "Command Prompt" and type "bootrec /fixboot" and hopefully that will work. If not you're going to have to reinstall Windows and I hope you have file backups.

Well, no. Safe mode won't load either. It always gets stuck on ...CLASSPNP.SYS.

Also, I don't really need the files I had on my PC. I would just liks to get Windows started up. How can I do this?

I've looked into the second responder's fix and I suspect that it may work. How does one boot a DVD though? I have a Windows 7 re-installation DVD ready for use.

Turn on the computer and press F12 repetedly. Once a menu comes up that has an option of "Onboard or USB CD Drive" put the Windows 7 DVD in the drive (or if you have 2 drives it's usually the top drive). Once you put the disk in the drive use the arrow keys to scroll down to the CD boot option and then press enter. If that works properly it should have a couple of white loading bars at the bottom that go by insanely fast then you'll get to the point where it'll take a couple of mins to load all the other files needed.

After it gets done loading all the other files with the slow progress bar at the bottom of the screen it will have the Windows Vista loading screen (if you're using a 64-bit OS I think it may be the Windows 7 start up screen) but anyways, after the long part gets done with the loading it will have a loading screen for a minute then it will come up to a blue background (the same one on the Windows 7 login screen) and then after a minute or so a screen will come up asking what language you want then after you select your language it will come up to another screen with a large button that says "install now" but instead of pressing that look below and select "repair my computer" After that a window will come up that says "detecting Windows installations" then after that select the only option if it asks (the Windows 7 install) then another window will come up that has a bunch of options. Select Command Prompt and then type "bootrec /fixboot" and press enter.

Now, if that doesn't work (since you obviously have access to another computer) download an Ubuntu 10.10 Desktop install CD and burn the ISO to a disk. Boot the computer using that and once it gets to a screen saying "install Ubuntu 10.10" and "try Ubuntu 10.10" click try. Once that loads up after clicking "try" connect a flash drive or an external hard drive to the computer. That will show up on the desktop there.  Then at the top click "system" and then there will be something with a grey box icon on the left that will have a name with "seagate" "WD" "Samsung" or "Hitatchi". Click on what ever that is and it will "mount" the drive on the desktop. Open that up once it shows up on the desktop and there will be all the files that would usually be on the C:\ drive in Windows. For pictures or whatever open "/Users/[username]/" and there will be all the folders like "pictures" "documents" "music" etc. To copy what you want off of the drive you have to select the files (for multiple files hold control and click on them) and the right click>copy and the minimize the window and open the flash drive, external hard drive, etc and the once that window shows up right click and hit paste.

Now, there may be a couple of buttons in these that aren't named what I said because I'm doing this from memory but the process is the correct order (I know what the screen looks like and what order it comes in). And also, the reason for Ubuntu 10.10 is because it lacks Unity and I haven't had a change to work with that so I can't tell you how to get files off the drive in Unity.

Unfortunately, the PC doesn't go past the loading screen. The flag just sits there waving.

I ran diagnostic tests on my PC and got 'Hard Drive Error: 0146'. I am thinking this means my hard drive completely failed... and I need to buy a new one.

I contacted Dell Support, and well, seems as though they are going to send over a technician with a replacement SATA drive. Thanks for all the help guys, I appreciate it.

ItsVirtuoso

Happy to have helped.

Bev.