Something I found out tonight (just now!) through Dell Technical Support (here from my PC, as my notebook crashed & burned) was a cool way to run some great diagnostic tests was to do the following:

Even with seemingly unworkable problems like: DVD stuck in drive (non "tray" system, one like a car CD player, BCD\Boot\ error with 0xc000000f code,) you can:

Hit power (on) + Fn key and hold until you hear an unusual (non "Beep" beep. It's an irregular system driver noise.

Let all tests cycle and, at the end, answer "no" to the final test.

Resetting BIOS to factory defaults after the fact will allow you to, in most cases, assuming you're current on revisions (in my case, A11 with a Studio 1558 with Windows 7 x64 Home Premium + Vista x64 Ultimate,) disable all unnecessary hardware/options when it comes to this situation (WLAN, etc.)



SATA to IDE is important to set.

Configuring USB as a bootable device (will differ on almost every BIOS brand, Phoenix, AMI, Award, etc.,) is pertinent; download (if you've got the same error as me,) SourceForge's UNetbootin.

I've tried lots of utilities just to see what's out there.

That particular one is the simplest and fastest way to make a BOOTABLE ISO image out of a Windows DVD (with at least a 4+ GB flash drive!)

...good FYI to throw in there.

I hope this benefits someone out there in the BSOD land.

v877051