Windows 7: Dell Inspiron 1545 continuously boot loops after factory recovery

I am very frustrated with my friends laptop. She asked me to restore her computer to factory settings. She is not at all tech savvy, so I know for a fact she did not do anything to mess it up. It was running fine, but she just wanted to clean it out and bring it back to like new. She pretty much only uses her computer for school papers and email. I have done factory recovery on many computers at this point and I have never had any problems at all until now.

First thing I did was hook up my external hard drive and saved all of her documents and pictures. I then restarted the computer and pressed F8 and then clicked on repair my computer. It took me to datasafe backup and restore. I went as far as to restore the factory image. I chose not to save any files and to restore it to new again. It completed as normal and I clicked restart. This is where things went very wrong.

When it restarts, a list of files pops up and then it says "Setup is preparing your computer for first use." It also shows another list of files that seem to be loading as well as it tells me that it is booting in safemode. Next thing it says is that "Setup will continue after restarting your computer". It then continues to restart and perform this boot loop until I turn it off.

I tried to repair the computer and it would fail saying it was offline. So, I plugged the hard drive into an adapter to hook it to my other computer. I opened the disk manager. I saw that the recovery partition was not active like it is on my other hard drives. I also see that for some reason it has a tiny partition that is labeled fat. On my other hard drives it is labeled oem partition. Not sure if this makes a difference or not, but thought it was worth mentioning. Also, when I choose to explore the recovery partition, it says the recovery folder is empty, however the properties say it is nearly full with many files. On my other hard drives I can not access that folder at all. I also am not sure if this matters or not, but didn't want to let anything I am doing go unnoticed.

At this point I am completely lost. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

When Recovery fails when run from partition on the HD, then the Disks which should have been made as a backup are used. If you didn't make these disks, then they can be ordered from Dell Tech Support.

You can also consider doing a superior clean reinstall using the Windows 7 installation DVD for her version with the Product Key on COA sticker. This actually makes the computer better than new since it doesn't have the freeloading bloatware and useless factory utilities which have better versions built into Windows 7.

The only Dell Utilities worth keeping are System Diagnostics which should maintain their hotkey to run from boot - try it now.

Steps for getting a perfect clean reinstall of Factory OEM: Reinstalling Windows 7

Thank you! I actually had thought about installing a new copy of windows but I could not find the product key on the bottom of the computer. However, I just looked harder and it is under the battery. I am going to try this first thing in the morning. If it does not work, I will order the disks from dell for her. I know that she did not make any recovery disks when she bought the computer. Too bad.

Thanks for your help!

Do you have an Installation DVD for her version, or the ISO file to burn to DVD or write to USB?

Did you make the OEM manufacturer's Recovery Disks?


How to use Dell Recovery Partition,make Recovery Disks & how to order Recovery Disks.
Dell - Support