Vista Problem...

[DaIceMan]

Hey all, buddy of mine at work has a Dell Inspiron 1525 laptop, preloaded with Vista Home Premium. He was using it and got some type of error message prompting him to run some type of recovery, and then boot back into safe mode, at which point he only has a black screen with the mouse cursor.

I ran all the laptop diagnostics and ruled out any hardware problems. I can't boot to ANY desktop. normal or safe mode. I tried ubuntu and it errored out before completely loading. I ran the repair option from the Vista disc and it says there are no problems with the windows install. No restore points to even try that.

Short of doing a system recovery, and reloading all the wonderful preinstalled Dell CRAP, does anyone have any ideas I might give a shot? He, nor I, have a problem reloading Vista, though I hate reinstalling Dell garbage, but it's the only real option at this point unless someone has a trick I hadn't thought of.

Thanks in advance.

[Alathald]

Don't use the disc that came with the laptop, use an OEM or retail disc if you have one around and you won't have to deal with all the Dell crap. As far as I understand, the activation key for companies like Dell is tied directly to the hardware, not the install disc.

[DaIceMan]

as I said, it's a buddies laptop. He's worried if he has to send it in for hardware repair, they will hassle him if has an altered install. He paid for the extended warranty, but would rather pay me to fix it if I can, rather than take a chance of shipping it. We work in a facitlity that ships 5-600 ups/fedex packages a day, so he knows how things are handled.

[KnightRid]

Bite the bullet and put it back to factory fresh condition and see if he still has problems.

You can always uninstall the Dell crap, or do like Alathald said after you make sure the thing still works without having to send it back.

Mike

As for the shipping - they shipped it to him ;) As long as it is packaged well enough for elephants to do a jig on it, he would be fine.

Doesnt Dell have any local places anymore to do repairs, or did he just not opt for that kind of extended warranty?

[ViPeR.Ja]

try calling dell when i had a problem with xps m1530 they actually came to my house and fixed the problem it was hardware problem idk if they will do that for a software problem but it doesnt hurt to try