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Windows Repair Errors with Dell Inspiron 15R
I'm working on a friend's Dell laptop that never gets past the Windows startup screen. I asked her if she installed any new software or drivers and of course she didn't know. My feeling is that the master boot record has become corrupted, but I can't even get to safe mode command prompt. When you press F8 at boot up and make the selection, the basic drivers start to load but halt at disk.sys or classpnp.sys. I looked up these errors online, and it seems the consensus is to use the bootrec.exe /FixMBR command, or some flavor of such. But I can't even get that far! I've changed the Boot Order in BIOS so that an Installation DVD will take precedence, but I never get to the windows installation screen. It continues to try to boot from the hard drive and the cycle starts all over. I do have a copy of Acronis Backup 2009, I was able to have it boot, but I didn't have any options to open a command prompt. If this was a desktop, I'd simply open it up and install the drive in a good computer I have and work on it. But it's a brand new Dell Laptop and I don't want to void any warrenties. I haven't called Dell yet because I figured they would be useless, or not cover anything because it's not hardware.
Any suggestions would be most welcome! The laptop is configured with Win 7 X64 Home Premium. I have personal install disks of Vista Ultimate, Win 7 X64 Ultimate, and Win 7 X64 Home Premium.
Cykoth