Windows 7 Home Premium - No OS Listed on CD Boot

Dell Inspiron M5030 laptop. I see no indication on the chassis windows of just what bit version this is, and entering the service tag in Dell's webpage only gives me a choice of 32 or 64 when looking for drivers.

Normal booting gets me as far as 'Starting Windows'. I see the 4 colored balls coming together to make the Windows logo. And that's a far as it goes. No further. And no error.

Starting with a disk, either 64 or 32 bit W7HP reveals no OS listed. Continuing to the diagnostic screen - Startup Repair could not fix the problem. Choosing System Restore yields an error screen stating that 'To use System restore, you must specify which Windows installation to restore.' Obviously this tool is not smart enough to know that it showed me no operating system to restore.

Command Prompt won't let me off the X: drive. When I type C: I get 'The device is not ready'. Typing sfc /scannow /offbootdir=c:\ /offwindir=c:\windows gives me 'Windows Resource Protection could not start the repair service'.

The memory diagnostic wants me to restart the computer and check for problems. If I can't get past 'Starting Windows', the memory diagnostic is useless.

What are my options? This worked just fine until 2 days ago.

Hi
First thing I would do is test the hard drive with the manufacturer diagnostic tool

oscer1 said:

Hi
First thing I would do is test the hard drive with the manufacturer diagnostic tool

So you want me to open up the back of this laptop and find the mfg of the hard drive. Then use another PC to download a diagnostic bootable tool and then burn that to a disk? Is that what you mean?

Well you could try seatools but I like to use manufacturer of drive.

Reboot and tap the F12 key to run Dell Hardware Diagnostics from F12 Menu. An error message normally means bad hardware needing reseating or replacement. If it won't run reboot into BIOS setup to confirm the HD is detected. If not you'll need to get it to be detected or replace it.

If hardware passes work through the steps for Troubleshooting Windows 7 Failure to Start which try everything possible including using Bootrec/Bootsect commands to force an install to show for repair, rescuiing your files at any point, then if necessary run Dell Windows 7 PC Restore or do the superior Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7

Try booting in safe mode. If it stops please tell us the last listed driver.

townsbg said:

Try booting in safe mode. If it stops please tell us the last listed driver.

The last listed driver has somehow changed - when I first tried safe mode the other day the screen was completely filled with drivers. I cannot recall just which driver was at the bottom of the page, but I know it was not the last driver that is currently listed. It now only lists 3 drivers, the last of which is hal.dll. It hangs there for a couple minutes then a black screen, followed by the Windows failed to start, with the 2 choices of Launch Startup Repair and Start Windows Normally. The 'Repair' (yeah, right) option is the default, so once the 30 second countdown hits 0 the screen goes black for a second, and reoffers me those same 2 choices.

And wait.... I restarted in safe mode and this time it went past the hal.dll, filled the screen with drivers and stopped at AtiPcie.sys. This is the driver that it stopped on the other day, and it never moves from this screen.

That is a an ATI graphics driver. Kind of strange since mode is suppose to switch to generic drivers. Anyway I found an old thread addressing that. Start up problem - possibly AtiPce.sys?

boweasel said:

townsbg said:

Try booting in safe mode. If it stops please tell us the last listed driver.

The last listed driver has somehow changed - when I first tried safe mode the other day the screen was completely filled with drivers. I cannot recall just which driver was at the bottom of the page, but I know it was not the last driver that is currently listed. It now only lists 3 drivers, the last of which is hal.dll.

I don't like this because that is the interface between the kernel and the harware. It is really bad if that goes out. You might have some low level corruption.

gregrocker said:

Reboot and tap the F12 key to run Dell Hardware Diagnostics from F12 Menu. An error message normally means bad hardware needing reseating or replacement. If it won't run reboot into BIOS setup to confirm the HD is detected. If not you'll need to get it to be detected or replace it.

If hardware passes work through the steps for Troubleshooting Windows 7 Failure to Start which try everything possible including using Bootrec/Bootsect commands to force an install to show for repair, rescuiing your files at any point, then if necessary run Dell Windows 7 PC Restore or do the superior Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7

Thanks, greg. I'd forgotten about Dell's F12 being part of the Boot Menu, and like an idiot I'd been pressing F11. Now that you've pointed me in the right direction... It passes all the Diagnostics until it gets to the DST Short Test - which fails, saying no HDD detected.

So I took out all 14 screws, opened up the back and reseated the drive (Western Digital). It got to the Short Test and errored again. This time Test Results : Fail
Error Code 0151
Msg : Error Code 2000-0151
Msg : Hard Drive 0 - incorrect status : 32 No additional sense information

Does this make any 'additional sense' to you?

Run WD Data Lifeguard bootable flash stick Extended scan to know for certain the condition of the drive. If it isn't detected you can try in another PC, but it's most likely toast.