Dell Laptop won’t load OS!

[LawyerRon]

(I hope this post is in the right forum, but mods feel free to move if not)

I’m trying to help a friend get her Dell Laptop running Vista back up and running. She needs to get her Quicken info and other files off this machine. The laptop starts to boot up and I see the MS splash screen and progress bar. Next, all I get is a blank screen, but the funny thing is, I can see and move the mouse cursor around the screen. I just can’t see anything other than a blank screen and mouse cursor. When I boot into safe mode, I get the same thing, but when the computer goes into “screen saver” mode, I can see the default geometric Vista screen saver moving around the screen, but that’s all I see.

I’ve run all the Dell diagnostics for hardware, video, ect, from the diagnostic partition, and all check out. I’ve checked all the settings in the bios, and they’re all at default settings. My guess is a virus or somesuch thing has damaged the Vista OS. I’ve got the Dell “OS Reinstall CD” but I don’t want to wipe out all her info if I can help it. Does anyone know if this CD has a “repair” feature like the XP CD has? Or do I need to do a complete install and loose all files and info? TIA.

[ThePoor]

take the hard drive out and put it and another computer vis USB inclosure or what have and backup those files or you can get the Ultimate boot CD and boot from the CD and backup those file.

[LawyerRon]

Originally Posted by ThePoor take the hard drive out and put it and another computer vis USB inclosure or what have and backup those files or you can get the Ultimate boot CD and boot from the CD and backup those file.

Yeah, I thought about taking the hdd out as a last resort, but I've never done that on a laptop before. Do they have an IDE interface, the same as IDE drives?

Also, what is the Ultimate Boot CD?

[Spools]

2.5" laptop drives have similar connections to the 3.5" desktop drives but they typically have a mounted connector that they slide into (sometimes with a removable tray) rather than a cable. A USB hard drive adapater (like this one) allow you to connect the drive to a working system just like a USB "thumb" drive. Then you can run scans or drag and drop files that you want to backup.

[LawyerRon]

Originally Posted by Spools 2.5" laptop drives have similar connections to the 3.5" desktop drives but they typically have a mounted connector that they slide into (sometimes with a removable tray) rather than a cable. A USB hard drive adapater (like this one) allow you to connect the drive to a working system just like a USB "thumb" drive. Then you can run scans or drag and drop files that you want to backup.

OK, thanks for the info Spools.

Also, does anyone know if the Dell OS Restore CD has a repair feature on it like the MS CD does? If so, I could try that first to see if I can repair the OS and then get the files off it.

[LawyerRon]

I did a bit of looking around for the Ultimate Boot CD, and I like the idea of giving it a try. I noticed their are several different sites and versions out there. Can someone recommend a link I could use for UBC for Vista?