It sounds like a Harddrive Failure.  What model laptop, what OS, how big is the harddrive and how much RAM installed?

Did you try testing your hardware with the dell diagnostics cd ? That is worth a try to look for defects.

Should that report your hardware is ok, and i know this may be an unorthodox way of testing, try Knoppix Live ( http://www.knoppix.org/ 

It is a nice bootable CD. Try booting from it to make sure your problem is not related to a problem with your OS. You can even check your harddrive with Knoppix.

Hope this helps.

Message Edited by Rijko on 03-17-2005 05:51 AM

your hard drive failed, you will need to reformat the hard drive and re-install everything, if it fails again later, you have a bad hard drive...

i can find no evidence in the info that was given which anyone can use to conclude the harddrive is broken. If someone does, please enlighten me....

The error points to something that might be wrong with the registry. That may be due to a system crash, it may be a broken harddisk.

Did you run the dell diagnostics ? If that comes out fine you might pop in the XP cd and boot the system, and try a repair installation.

good luck

where can i get a dell diagnostics cd from as i don't appear to have one.

 

J

Try F12 on bootup and see if Diagnostic is on the menu, did not catch your model, but Dell has been putting the Diagnostic in a partition of the Hard Drive so you can run prior to loading an OS.

Dell, Product Support; Downloads & Drivers (upper left of screen) will also have it there for Download and create your CD or floppy disk.

If you have an older model with came with a Resource CD, set your boot order for CDROM first, putin the CD and reboot. The Diagnostics will start in DOS. BTW is there some reason you did not post your laptop model? It would be of much help to the forum posters.

Is there a dell diagnostics cd available for this- i entered product support and searched through the available downloads, of which they appeared to all want to be downloaded straight to the hard drive- do i know want them on a cd. I am well confused yet again. Even if and when i do make a cd how do i use it. As i've said once i turn my laptop on i have literally no interaction with it, from my own minimal knowledge of laptops i see no option to run any disc. I'm hopeless and just completely lost now.

I've been home from uni, leaving my laptop in uni, and to be honest i didn't actually know what model it was. It's a Lattitude LS I believe. Windows 200, and beyond that i can't give you a great deal more info. Tried my laptop again recently, still giving the same message, still refusing to startup.