is it a dead laptop or can it be fixed ?

[rusalka]

thanks both - will have ago !

 

[pebbly]

You're very welcome rusalka we will still be here

 

[DavidE]

I believe Dell uses the F2 key to access the BIOS setup.
Have you tried tapping the F2 key at startup?

 

[bobafetthotmail]

to access BIOS the keys can be F2 or F12 or Del, depending on what computer that is.

This tutorial guides you in the process of changing boot order so that it will boot from CD.

 

[rusalka]

i can access BIOS but I wouldnt really know what to do from here

 

[bobafetthotmail]

That's good news. Screen is fine, and probably mobo (=motherboard, the component everything else is bolted/soldered on).

Ok, navigate inside the BIOS panels with arrows and enter until you are in the "Boot" or "boot options" or "boot order" or similar (I cannot be more specific as the layout is a bit different for each device), then you should see a list with three or four entries, one of these will be your hard drive, one is the CD drive, one may be the network card, one may be "removable drives". Try putting the CD drive as the first of the list, then navigate again in the BIOS until you find the Save and Exit option.

Selecting it will reboot the laptop, so place the disk in the CD drive and see if it boots from it. Use only a win 7 installation or repair disk. If you don't have one, this tutorial tells you how to make one.

If you don't know what entry is the cd drive in the BIOS's list, you need to place one entry as the first and try, then place another and try again and so on until you tried every entry in the list as first.