My XPS Desktop (DXG 051) is a bit over one year old, i.e. I no longer qualify for the customer support during the "limited warranty" which is quite disappointing considering that I have been purchasing Dell PC's and Laptops for the past 10 years ... Anyhow, here is my problem:

 

- Windows XP (SP2) froze yesterday while running an application, I had to turn the PC off by pressing the power button (i.e. not exiting Windows properly via the Start menu)

 

- when restarting the PC the Dell screen appeared and then the XP boot screen (with the progress bars); all of a sudden the progress bars stopped and the screen went blank.

 

- I tried to reboot several times but the same thing kept happening. I then entered the system setup (F2) to change the boot sequence to CD ROM in order to be able to boot windows from my CD Rom drive

 

- I now kept receiving the error message " Error loading operating system_" even when I change the boot sequence back to "Onboard SATA Hard Drive" as no. 1 again (I haven't returned to the XP load screen at all since I made these changes)

 

- during my attempts I also received a message that the "floppy drive" could not be found (my pc does not have a floppy drive) - I think I have resolved this one by now by disabling the floppy drive in the "onboard devices".

 

- however, the pc can still not find the operating system - neither from the hard drive nor the CD ROM

 

- at some stage I received the following error message:

 

Alert! Previous attempts at booting this system have failed at checkpoint [Bye ]. For help in resolving this problem, please note this checkpoint and contact Dell Technical Support.-

Strike the F1 key to continue, F2 to run the setup utility

 

- neither striking the F1 key, nor running the setup utility is of any help.

 

- I can't contact the Dell Technical Support because my "limited warranty" has expired (by one month and a handful of days)

 

Can anyone help please? I am pretty desperate at this stage ...

 

Cid