Missing operating system

Power down your system. When you power up press F12 at the Dell BIOs screen

Select diagnostics, run these and any extended test particularly on the hard drive.

Ive tried this but will try it again.  When I ran it the first time it ran all of the disk tests and came back clean but I aborted it after those tests so I will let it run AND run any extened diagnostics.

Hi biteme1129,

Welcome to Dell Community,

I have few questions for you in order to understand the issue:

1) What is the model of the system are you using & the version of the OS (Win XP/Vista/7)?

2) Are you using RAID/dual hard drives in your system?

3) Have you recently tried upgrading the operating system or installed any new software/hardware?

4) Do you have the Dell OEM version OS disk with you?

Please post back your response.

Attempt to follow my wiki A Clean Install of Windows 7, using a retail .iso (see the wiki for details). Can you install Windows?

If you have the same version of XP on your desktop and laptop (i.e. both are Home or both are Professional) then you may use the disc that came with your Dell Desktop,

Hi, It's a Inspiron 1545 running Windows XP version 2002 Service Pak 3 Pentium Dual Core CPU T4200 @ 2.00 GHZ.  I tried to force a format of the disk as there was nothing on it I wanted or needed and wanted to start over again.  I have one Dell "Already installed on your computer" disk but it's for my desktop Dell.   Any help would be appreciated.  I have run the full diagnostics with no errors and from one of the other Dell disks I have I wa able to run scandisk - no errors.  Any help would be sincerely appreciated - even if it's - go buy a new disk.

Hi, I hit enter when it ask's if I want to do the ASR function and then it jumps into starting windows and seems to be loading but when it comes to the Starting Windows point it comes back with "A problem has been detected and Windows is being shutdown to prevent damage." Then there is the check disk for corruption which I have and then it comes to the Technical Info - STOP: 0x0000007b

I do appreciate your help but I dont want you going nuts... It's just aggravating....

Hi biteme1129,

The version of windows disk that you are trying to use is very old. The 2002 version disk won’t have SATA drivers on it which might be causing the blue screen error before loading the OS disk. The Inspiron 1545 is approximately two year old system model & must have been shipped with Windows 7 OS. You can contact Dell tech support by calling 1-877-293-1197 or via chat: www.dell.com/gotochat & request for Dell OEM Win 7 OS/driver disk. There may be a nominal shipping fee involved in it. If you want to use Windows XP only, then you might want to contact Microsoft/local computer store for a newer (post 2004 with service pack 1 or above) version of Win XP disk. But I doubt if it will be available for purchase since it is an end of life operating system.

Please post back if you have any queries.

The version of windows disk that you are trying to use is very old.

The Inspiron 1545 has a full complement of drivers for Windows XP, it is possible it came with XP.

biteme1129 What Service Pack does the disc for your desktop have? Does the Inspiron 1545 have an XP COA, Vista COA or Windows 7 COA. If Vista or 7 is it Professional/Business or Ultimate? The COA is under the battery for this model, I believe.

Finally if the XP disc you have does not have Service Pack 3 or the SATA drivers you may follow this wiki here to update it.