My Dell Inspiron 1720 laptop (1.50 GHz Core Duo, 1 or 2 GB RAM) with Vista Home Premium has failed to boot several times, but I do not know what the problem is. This started when my computer froze suddenly when I tried to click on a menu in the Network and Sharing Center. The cursor could move, but I could not click on anything. After using Ctrl+Alt+Delete, and getting no response, I turned off the computer. I then turned it back on, and the boot sequence stopped before the computer went to the Vista login screen (after the Microsoft logo sequence). The computer screen went black, and the hard drive indicator stopped lighting up completely. I then did the following:

- When I turned back on the computer, a screen that went along the lines of "could not load boot disks" appeared, and gave me 3 options: F1 to retry boot, F2 to check the system information, and F3 to run on board diagnostics.

- I first checked the system information, then ran the on board diagnostics (called "Pre-Boot Assesment Build 4106" on my Dell), in which I passed all of the tests.

- The original "could not load boot disks" screen returned, and pressed F3 to retry booting, but failed in the same way as before.

- The computer then went into the "Windows Error Recovery" window and chose "Startup Repair". After this had finished, the computer still failed to boot.

- I then went to to the advanced startup menu, and tried to boot in safe mode, and it worked. I wanted to see it I could access the internet, so I rebooted to "safe mode w/ networking", but this failed to boot.

- After rebooting back to safe mode and performing System Restore to get back to the last restore point, safe mode, and safe mode with networking failed to load.

- The last thing I tried was going back to the advanced startup menu and selecting "Last Known Good Configuration". As soon as I chose this option the computer performed CHKDSK, and it passed the tests. The computer still went black before it went to login screen.

I have tried everything I could, and do not know what to do. Note that everytime I said that when the computer booting failed, it went through the manufacturer and Windows screens, and went black before the Vista login screen could appear. I think this is may be a Vista problem, but I am not sure.

Are you able to get into Safe Mode by tapping F8 repeatedly just before the Windows splash screen shows up?

Hi usasma,

I was able to get into safe mode by pressing F8 before the Windows screen came. I only did this after the computer failed to boot after the "Startup Repair" program had finished. I am currently still able to access the all of the boot options besides safe mode when I press F8, but the computer will not finish the boot sequence after the Windows screen for any of boot options I have tried so far.

After a few days, I decided to perform the full computer diagnostics, and it had failed several of the tests relating to the hard drive, but passed the other tests. I called Dell support, and said that I needed to replace the hard drive. This was a completely different problem than I had expected. I still do not know what caused the problem, but it is going to get resolved. Thanks!

Ya' gotta love the Dell diagnostics when they work as designed! In XP the black screen symptoms pointed to either a bad hard drive or a problem with video drivers - but with Vista it gets a bit more involved.

I'd suspect any hard drive that failed any tests - as your data is stored in little magnetic charges on the platters inside the hard drive. Anything that messes with the hard drive is likely to mess with accessing those magnetic charges. That means that the best thing you can expect is significantly decreased performance - with the worst case being total data loss.

Dunno what Dell is doing for you, but your first priority should be to backup your data/files/etc before the hard drive fails. After that you'll have to put a new hard drive in and then reinstall Windows from the Dell recovery disks.