Windows 7 - Windows Stuck in Start Screen or Start-Up Repair Mode

Hi,

I am hoping people on the forum can help me. Got a Dell XPS M1550 last year January. Everything was fine until today. It's a North American machine, but I was in England for an exchange and currently am, and I think Dell warranty on Hardware is 1 year anyway so really no point after 3 months into the second year. (The region just incase power has anything to do with but its been fine the past 6 months so I don't see how it might).

In any case, I was away last night, and when I came back, my computer was on because I left it to run a McAfee virus check. When I was leaving it had 34GB of free space on HDD, but when I checked it when I returned it was at 59.1GB.

After I turned of the computer later in the day and took it with me to a different city I connected it again and turned it on. From that point it went directly to the windows welcome screen with windows logo and Windows 7 text loading, but not going anywhere. Eventually it restarted giving me 2 options: Either go into start-up repair or start windows normally. When I start it normally, same thing happens, when I go into system repair, it is stuck at a black screen with a mouse cursor. It won't boot safe mode or any other mode, giving me error screens... (Either {Fatal ... Error} or STOP: 0x0000007B error. I've had an HP fail on me last year with Vista and it was a motherboard failure, I am afraid this may be the same thing again although I am not sure...

It won't boot in safe mode, and I do not have the recovery or the windows 7 CD on me (Windows 7 was an upgrade option purchased through my university)... What can I possibly do to try and fix it? Thank you very much for any advice you can offer...

PS

Because its a dell it now automatically loads into the MediaDirect screen but then again proceeds to an error screen....

Welcome!

Fortunately, you can still create a repair disc, using method 2 of this tutorial: System Repair Disc - Create

Just download the ISO and burn it.

Try booting to the repair disc, and try a System Restore: System Restore

Good luck!
~JK

Did that, but it does the same thing, goes through the windows loading files procedure, gets to a black screen with a mouse cursor in the middle and just stays there, I can move the mouse, but its just a black screen...

Also, when I was booting safe mode it only gave me the option to boot the XP Component not the actual Windows 7....:S

Also, tried to boot to last known configuration, nothing happens, just gets stuck in windows starting mode for about a minute before flashing blue and restarting (at least I think it flashes blue..)

Hmm... that's not a good sign.

Try testing your RAM and hard disk, hard drive especially.

You can download the appropriate tools for your hard disk here: Hard Drive Diagnostics Tools and Utilities (Storage) - TACKtech Corp.

Download a copy of Memtest86 and burn the ISO to a CD using ImgBurn. Boot from the CD, and run at least 5 passes.