Computer problems - can anyone help?

It's a DELL, running Vista.

I was using it, it froze, I couldn't do anything, not even ctrl-alt-del ... so I pushed the button and switched off.

On starting, now all I'm getting is the DELL start up screen with options F2 and F12, then it goes to a black screen with a blinking cursor in the left corner (facing the screen).

I've tried pressing F8 for safe mode but it doesn't do it.

I've tried looking at F2 and setting the HDD as the priority but it makes no difference.

Obviously the laptop is still working via the router as I'm using it now.

What has happened? Any suggestions?

Sounds like the hard disk has gone

You could try going into F2 again and 'reverting to defaults' sometimes that does the trick. Or sometimes there will be a disk utility (in F2) that can tell you the s.m.a.r.t status of your disk (whether it has failed or not).

Failing that you could get a usb disk reader, then take out the HD from the PC put it in there and connect that to the laptop to see if you can access it (and maybe check the smart reading to see if it is faulty or not). http://www.amazon.co.uk/Welland-USB3...3462977&sr=1-6

Doesn't sound like the motherboard cos you can get to the dell start-up screen, hence I'm thinking it's the HD.

Thanks Azz - do you know if it can be fixed?

I was just thinking the other day how hassle-free this computer has been.

New hard drives aren't expensive. Expensive will be if you didn't get a copy of Windows, or at least a back up disc when you bought it?

Thanks Luthien - I think there was something - I'll check in the box tomorrow. We tidied things away, you know.

It's possible that you've got a boot virus on it - my nephew had that on his laptop and I had to wipe the disk (using my mac) and then get him to reinstall windows on it with his windows disk.

Do you have anything on the disk that wasn't backed up? If so you could just try wiping it first (and reinstalling windows) before buying another disk.

That thing I linked to is worth having around anyway, as you could then buy another disk at some point in the future and save all your important files/photos on to it.

No, I'm pretty sure I backed up ALL my important stuff this time. I have an external hard drive to save stuff to.

Thanks for that, Azz, much appreciated.

I hate computers!

If everything is backed up, and you're happy to reinstall windows over the disk (wiping everything) then you can insert the windows cd (select boot from cd in the F2 menu first) then start the PC and follow the install instructions. However my nephews didn't let him do that until I deleted his hard disk first (as it was a boot virus).

If you get stuck just give us a shout!

How frequently do you back up your stuff on your external hard drive, and how often do you check it? My main external hard drive [I have two] is set to back up everything at 12 noon each day. My second "pocket" external drive is also set to back up everything, but manually - ie I do a back-up usually once a week.

Before I got the second external hard drive [belt and braces comes to mind] I once lost 6 months of everything because I had forgotten to check that the external hd was actually backing up. I just accepted that when Cobian BackUp started it was actually doing what it was supposed to do.

My hard drive had died and I was so blasé about it saying "no problem, I have everything backed up" only I did not. It turned out that the last back-up was six months earlier as the actual case of the external hd had stopped the back-up from actually happening, so I did not bother to check.

I now check my F drive [main external hd] at least twice weekly, and the G drive [secondary external hd] after I have done a weekly manual back-up.

As I say - belt and braces - but when my hd had to be reformatted last week and Windows re-installed, at least I had everything backed up and is now back on my computer.

Could be a dead HDD, certainly some kind of boot sector corruption. A Linux live CD would allow you to:
1. Retrieve your data if the disk is still OK.
2. Potentially repair the MBR if it is corrupted. (Again, assumes disk is OK.)
3. If 1 & 2 fail, fair to assume the disk is dead.

Hope you get it sorted!

As a slight OT, thought I'd share my backup strategy. I use an old PC & copy (Using rsync.) user files from the 'live' machine to the 'disaster recovery' machine as & when it occurs to me to do it. I actually tested this strategy for real this weekend as I wanted to upgrade the 'live' machine as it was running a version of Linux that was pretty near to being unsupported. The backup machine worked great! Email and web browser settings all present and correct along with docs, photos etc. Having taken another copy on external drives, we're now in the process of copying files back to the new install on the live machine from the backup PC.