Yesterday I put win7 32 bit on my old dell xps m1730 laptop. This process was way easier than the last time when I re-installed xp, where I had to install EVERY driver known to man! The end result is flawless with one exception...When I start the machine up the bootable ISO disc must be in in order for it to start up.
Check you BIOS settings. It may not have the HD in the boot order. As a quick test there should be a key that temporarily changes the boot order. On my Laptop it is F12. Keep tapping on boot. You should get a menu allowing you to put the HD first or add it. If it boots from HD there then go into BIOS Boot settings and set it permanently.
It may say on startup which key opens your settings. If not try doing a restart. That should do an actual shutdown and restart which may give you time to read the startup message with the key press info.
Dell is usually F12 for boot menu and F2 for setup.
Next post back a screenshot of Disk Management - Post a Screen Capture Image showing all drives and listings. We can usually spot the problem.
You should have followed the steps in Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7 or I would do it over to get it perfect.
Otherwise we will help you confirm the Active partition so you can run Startup Repair up to 3 separate times which should rewrite the boot files and make the HD bootable. But we need to try to figure out why it didn't do that during install.
Quote