Ok, I'll explain this the best as I can but Im still totally mistified as to what happened

I went home for lunch yesterday and used my desktop as usual, its a dell XPS 630I and Ive had it maybe 4 months total. I just checked my email and logged back off to the user screen. While I was gone it kicked into hibernation mode like it always does when noones using it....

When I got home like 4 hours later I moved the mouse to bring it out of sleeping and nothing happened the screen stayed blank. So I waited and waited and it never kicked back on so I manually restarted it with the power button and it loaded to the dell screen which took alot longer than normal to load, right after that it popped up "Error Loading OS". I tried restarting and hitting the F8 button... no luck.... I hit F12 and tried running the diagnostics... nothing came up...

I put the dell cd in that has vista on it and hit the repair button near the bottom of the install screen and ran the different tests and nothing came up wrong. However I tried the memory test and it started I needed to reboot in order to use it... however when I did that it kicked back to the "Error Loading OS" screen...

So thats where I am right now and I have no clue what to do, I am going to just do a clean install but theres stuff Id really like to get off this drive before I wipe it clean.... Any help you can give would be greatly appreciated.. Im totally outa ideas and calling dells customer support you need a translator to get anything accomplished


Please help!

1-try to boot into safe mode (F8 repeatedly while booting)

If safeboot works go start>type cmd in search>then type sfc /scannow to do a system file check.

2- if safemode doesn't work boot from the dvd and do a repair install

let me know if you need help with any of this

Ken

I tried hitting f8 repeatedly however it goes straight to the "error loading OS" screen.

I cant get into the OS at all, not even safe mode.

I restarted and hit f12 repeatedly instead to bring up the menu where I can boot from optical drive. I tried using the "repair windows" option where it brings up the menu with the diagnostics or system restore and everything.

Even tried doing a system restore to a date a few days ago from there I knew everything was working well and it tells me "The system has been restored but my files and whatnot havent been affected"... it restarts and still says "error loading OS"

Oh!
Concerning the link in the previous message "Forgive me I'm not really too computer savvy" Im assuming since I have Dell XPS the option that applies to me is the OEM Recovery disk since the disk im using came in the cd pack with the desktop.

I know I have a small partition on my hard drive thats only like maybe 2gb and Im guessing thats the recovery partition your speaking of. However I can't figure out how to get to the DOS prompt to find it.

Unless I hit f12 and go into the actual windows installation program and hit repair Im basically at a brick wall. I cant get anything else besides the BIOS to come up at all

Once I get to the DOS prompt however, how would I go about finding the recover partition and starting the recovery program once I get there?

"Thanks for the patience in explaining all this guys"

If you have a recovery disc, put in the drive and reboot. You might also have a key to press to load the recovery on the partition. Look in your manual. If not, you can use the Ubuntu Live Cd to access your files, copy them to an external hard drive, then reinstall. Try the repair option first.