Try a startup repair as outlined in this article. You will need your Vista DVD to do this.

 

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/tutorial148.html

 

"The boot problem only arose when my c/drive 160gb capacity was filled"

 

You may have to delete/move some data from the C drive before it can be made bootable again, if the drive is truly filled to the max. If there is no room left on the drive, then startup repair will not be able to write to the drive to repair it.

Thanks for reply Mo.

 

I tried the suggestion following the link you supplied but with no joy.  The system would not boot the Vista disc.  It reports "Floppy diskette seek failure".  I tried booting from the CD rom drive without success.  Diskette drive is set to Internal as default.

 

BTW I am 2 months away from my 70th Birthday and am ageing rapidly over this matter.

Maybe the floppy drive has died, turn it off in the bios and try to boot from the DVD again.

Bingo it worked.  You are a genius man.  I turned the diskette to OFF and booted windows from DVD RW and followed the instruction from your earlier link.  The system has been repaired from the Vista disc and the system is fully functional.  I presume to leave BIOS as it is currently.

 

Thank you ever so much.  This save me from a long and complicated phone call to Dell via Bangladesh.  Have a drink on me.:smileyvery-happy:

Bood Sequence shows the following:-

 

1. Onboard or USB CD-ROM Drive

 

2. Onboard SATA Hard Drive 

 

3. Onboard IDE Hard Drive (not present)

 

4. USB Device   (not present)

 

5. Onboard or USB Floppy Drive (not present)

 

It would therfore seem that I do not have a floppy drive.  The PC still refuses to boot from the CD Rom or the DVD R/RW.

Currently using a very old Mesh notebook which  I brought back from the dead.  It and I are both depressed.

 

 

You are welcome, the A05 bios is fine, that is what I am running on my Dim 5150 with Vista right now.

 

Happy 70th in advance.