Is a Reformat Necessary?

Have a 32 bit Vista Dell tower that ALWAYS boots to the black screen with white lettering and the 2 choices of launching repair or normal startup. Either choice just takes me to that same screen.

I have run every test imaginable: (all from Hiren's Boot disk)

long SeaTools test - no errors found
Western Digital Diagnostics (its a WD drive) - no errors
HDAT2 (to test and repair bad sector) - Runtime error 217
VIVARD Ver 0.4 test - no errors

Windows Memory Diagnostic - passed
MemTest86 - passed

Except for the HDAT2 test everything looks fine.

If I boot from a Dell Vista CD and select repair the startup repair never ends - 14 hours with the little blue blob moving through the slider box.

Same result from a MS Vista CD.

I even borrowed a Spotmau Power Suite 2011 CD and used it to do a MBR repair, Missing File Repair, and Disk Check. All completed successfully, but I still only have those same two options on a boot.

So I decided to reinstall Vista and inserted the Dell Vista CD. When I get to the screen where I am to select Install or Repair I selected install, got the Please Wait... with the hourglass. Eight hours later it still says please wait. I then tried the MS Vista CD and got the same result.

I have no idea what the problem could be. I removed the drive and hooked it up to another PC and ran a full MalwareBytes. It came up clean. I copied all the documents and pictures to an external drive.

Now I just wanna reinstall...

Try with the restoration partition, report back
Inside the Dell PC Restore Partition

richc46 said:

Try with the restoration partition, report back
Inside the Dell PC Restore Partition

Click to expand...

Wow.... I wasn't expecting an answer from a Vista forum that links me to a page explaining how to restore XP, nevermind that it's asking me to create yet another bootable CD, albeit one that boots into DOS.

I simply wondered about the 'Please wait...' on the install screen, and if erasing the drive, formatting and partitioning would take care of the problem.