[ACher91]

My computer is windows 7. So, one night, I was just chillin' at home, browsin' some firefox, watchin' some windows media player, when suddenly my computer turned off for no reason. When I tried to start it back up, it went into startup repair. After running and restarting repeatedly for about an hour, it finally says that it can't solve the problem.

...

Long story short, I've tried starting in every mode, safe and otherwise, and tried every option from the advanced options section of startup repair, including system restore AND every flavor of factory restore available. Everything fails. How nice; apparently the hard drive is so fubar'd, it can't even factory restore?

So, after 2 days and many hours of being pissed off, I've puppy linux'ed into it and saved all my files and stuff. At this point, I don't care how it's done or in what way, shape, or form I restore it, I just want it to WORK.

I don't have any installation or repair cds or anything; the computer just came with windows 7 installed.

What can I do?

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Desktop or Laptop?
Name brand and if so what brand, Make and model/.
If custom built what is the brand, make and model of the motherboard.
Did you receive any installation disks with the system when bought brand new? If not there may be a Recovery Partition we can use that would return the system to a factory new installation.

[rshaffer61]

Desktop or Laptop?
Name brand and if so what brand, Make and model/.
If custom built what is the brand, make and model of the motherboard.
Did you receive any installation disks with the system when bought brand new? If not there may be a Recovery Partition we can use that would return the system to a factory new installation.

[ACher91]

Dell Inspiron 570 Desktop

didn't receive anything with it :/

[rshaffer61]

OK lets see if there is indeed a Recovery partition that will help you.

The key combination is CRTL + F11 pushing the keys at the same time at the the dell screen during post. Once you push them then you want to release them.
It should go into the recovery partition so you can do a system restore.

[ACher91]

Wait so... do I hold ctrl+f11 until the screen comes up..?

[rshaffer61]

When the Dell screen shows up click and hold the key combination. Once you have done this then let them release quickly and hopefully it will go to the Recovery Partition if there is one present.

[ACher91]

K it doesn't work. Nothing happens and it just proceeds to the startup repair. I've tried every possible combination of holding/pressing it at different times.

[rshaffer61]

OK that tells me you have no Recovery Partition.
That makes repair even harder since now you have two choices. You can contact Dell and purchase a set of original recovery disks. That will run around 30 USD for the set. The other option is to borrow a OEM version of
Win7 in the same type you have installed. Home, Pro or Ultimate.
You can then attempt a format and fresh install from there. We will need to get all the drivers before you do this so you can install them right after the fresh install.
If you go the Dell direction the disks will include the OS and all the drivers that were originally installed on the system brand new.

[ACher91]

All right... might you direct me somewhere I can buy this set of "original recovery disks"?

[rshaffer61]

Try this
Purchase your Upgrade, Accessories, or Replacement Parts 1-800-357-3355
Mon.-Fri.
7am - 9pm CST
Sat. & Sun.
8am - 6pm CST

[ACher91]

All right, uhh... I've looked around at windows 7 Home CDs (Home is the one I have), and there is a "full" version for about $200, and an "upgrade" version, for about $80 cheaper... Would it matter which one I get?

AND, if I can't get a windows 7 installation cd, would an xp cd work..? --would it be possible to just put in an xp installation cd and have it get rid of windows 7 and just install xp? And if not, then, I have another hard drive that I used to use as the main hard drive in my previous computer (which was windows xp). Since I got this new computer, I just wiped it clean and used it as a second place to put my files. It currently doesn't have any sort of system files on it whatsoever. Would it be possible to install windows xp on this old hard drive and have it become the main hard drive once again?

[rshaffer61]

All right, uhh... I've looked around at windows 7 Home CDs (Home is the one I have), and there is a "full" version for about $200, and an "upgrade" version, for about $80 cheaper... Would it matter which one I get?

Yep you can't use the upgrade without having a previous OS installed first.
You will need a full version BUT you can save some money if you were to buy a OEM version. The benefit is that they cost about half as much as a retail version. They are the same thing except you don't get any books and Microsoft supplies NO support for it except for updates.
The downfall is once you install it to your system it is forever married to that system and cannot be installed on any other system without paying for another license and uninstalling it from this system.
Your question about installing XP on the new system I'm going to say this.
If you buy a Ferrari (Win7) and take the motor out and put lets say a VW bug engine (XP) in it would you be happy with the performance of the Ferrari then? In hard truth why would you slow your system down and put a OS on it that next year all support is going to end with it?
Now back to Win7... I suggest looking up the Windows 7 Home OEM version and see the price difference. They normally run about $99.99 for one versus the $200.00 you found for the retail version.

[ACher91]

All right, but still, that's way more money than I want to spend. Plus I am in a bit of a time constraint and I'd rather just get it done with the resources I already have. So, as to this:

would an xp cd work..? --would it be possible to just put in an xp installation cd and have it get rid of windows 7 and just install xp? And if not, then, I have another hard drive that I used to use as the main hard drive in my previous computer (which was windows xp). Since I got this new computer, I just wiped it clean and used it as a second place to put my files. It currently doesn't have any sort of system files on it whatsoever. Would it be possible to install windows xp on this old hard drive and have it become the main hard drive once again?

^ WOULD IT ACTUALLY WORK?

Edited by ACher91, 04 August 2011 - 11:10 AM.

[rshaffer61]

Yes it should work but if the system originally came with Vista or Win 7 we may be running into a driver issue.
Also is the XP installed on any other system right now using the reg key supplied with the disk?
As I thought checking Dells site for drivers the only ones available are for Vista and Win7. No XP drivers at all.
I forgot to ad the link to Dell Drivers page HERE. You can see from the OS drop down menu there is no XP listed.

[ACher91]

Also is the XP installed on any other system right now using the reg key supplied with the disk?

Why, yes it is...