I have a Studio XPS 8100 that is having possible hard drive issues.  It brings up the Windows logo, but gets stuck on the blue recovery startup screen after that with a mouse cursor.  This happens regardless of whether I boot in safe mode, last known good config, or startup repair.

I wanted to run the Windows startup repair tool to see if it could help, so I tried booting from the Windows 7 install DVD that came with this desktop.  However, that's not working - after an hour of the Windows logo, it goes to a black screen with a mouse arrow.  I did set the DVD drive to be booted ahead of the hard drive in the BIOS, so I thought that should have worked.

So, since I'm not sure if the DVD is still good, I read that Microsoft allows downloads of Windows ISOs to a flash drive to authentic users, so they can install or boot from that.  I tried that today, but Microsoft won't take my product key since it's from Dell, and said I need to get it from Dell.

So, my question now is, how can I get a Windows 7 ISO from Dell, that I can put on a USB drive? I saw one link for that, but when I entered my service tag it said no image was available.

I did see some instructions elsewhere on how to create a bootable USB drive with Microsoft recovery tools, so I'll try that tonight...maybe that will be sufficient, but a bootable drive with Windows seems like it'd be better.