OMG this is fusterating!

Ok...

I am selling my laptop and I cannot ship it out until I clean all of my stuff off the hard drive. Im not sure what I did, but the OS (vista business) is uninstalled, and I am trying to reinstall it to get the laptop back to factory settings. Well...

I cannot get it to work.. I go to boot mode with the OS CD in, and I go through the steps. It always gets stopped on the last step on completing the installation. It takes forever. I just leave my computer on until it finishes, and then I will come back and there is a blank black screen and I cannot do anything except turn the computer off manually.

I cannot get on the computer, the furthest I can go is to the screen with the loading bar and lights going back and forth. The lights get "stuck" and are laggy. I cannot get past this screen

I had a chat online with a Dell rep and thats what they told me to do, and obviously it did not. I really need this done so I can ship out tommarow morning.

Please help me out.

 

Unless you deleted it, there is a Recovery Partition that has the Dell factory settings installed on it. When the Dell splash screen comes up, press F8 repeatedly and it should take you to Advanced Boot Options. From there, choose to repair your computer, and do so with the Recovery Partition. It will format your OS partition, and re-install Vista.

Hope you get it working...

 

yeah I dontbhave the rocovery options. the dell rep told me to delete the partitions

 

The bloody idiot.

 

so what can I do?

 

I had a very similar problem it would frezze at the last step..After a little thinking i figured that if i leave the Vista DVD in the drive after the "please wait while windows starts for the first time" it screws up the whole installation BUT if i eject the dvd before this screen, the installation would continue as normal.
i used a retail Vista DVD not a recovery disk BTW

 

A few last suggestions:

1) Burn another copy of the recovery disc.

2) Try using another HDD.

3) Make sure your current disc is free of dust/smudges/dirty

I know its not very helpful, but there isn't much you can do.

 

Try to get something called the Ultimate Boot CD...This will help you load the computer with your CD...then you can check your harddisks and run some tests to see if they are corrupt...maybe try to fix them. If you are successful at cleaning it up..then you have several options:

1) buy a basic version of Vista...load it
2) get a free copy of a version of Linux (Ubuntu is supposed to be good)
3) just sell the laptop w/o an OS..reduce the price.

hope this helps.

 

If all above tips Fail...Walk on the path of Unofficial Methods....sssh.. i didnt tell u that