The first thing is to check the www for forums relating to your specific laptop,

your specific problem and your specific operating system. It may be one associated with the official Dell or Microsoft sites, or an independent one - it comes down to GingIYLF. I'm no way an expert, but I rely on my computers for my livelihood and I've had issues like this and been able to fix them by learning from other peoples mistakes.

If it's still in warranty, phone the Dell helpline. These helplines can be pretty good and talk you through the various recovery paths.

If it's not in warranty, you may need to buy at least a remote CD drive so you can repair or reinstall your operating system. But be sure that the computer will recognise it before investing the money.

As I said, I'm no expert, but it sounds to me like a BIOS issue. You can get to the BIOS settings by pressing a function key (e.g. F2 or F4) early in the boot cycle, before the error message appears. You will then have access to some security, boot and other settings. What I usually do is frig about with those until it works (which it does sometimes!), but be careful!

If you can get it to boot up by those means, you may well find that the underlying problem is a program setting or add-in which you will need to uninstall or at least disable from running on boot-up.

These are what I would do, in the absence of better advice. Good luck.

Posted By: Higher Wrather, May 26, 09:22:12