scopeola

I have a dell inspiron 1521 with amd athlon 64 x2 processor and running windows vista basic.....
the problem is that the laptop does not boot up anymore.......
when i turn it on and i see the dell startup screen, the bar does not load any further and it does nothing after that.
I cannot even run diagnostics or boot in safe mode,
the media direct does the same thing and just displays the dell media direct screen and then nothing.
sometimes when i switch it on it does not come on but the CAPS LOCK light flashes intermittently till it goes off again.
what can i do?

belfasteddie

Your hard drive is likely the prob. Usually if you can get into the Bios you run a Hard drive check.( although you can't from what you say) . If it fails the test then you get a new drive. Sometimes you can do a factory install and it will reinstal the OS but then fail when you reboot.

TriggerFinger

I suggest you run HDD diagnostics to test your hard drive for hardware errors. Use your HDD brand's diagnostic utility (see HDD Diags link on my sig). Since you cannot boot into Windows anymore, I suggest you get the file with the ISO extension. D/load the ISO file into another computer and use Nero or ImgBurn to burn the image into a blank CD. This would create you a bootable CD. Btw direct copy to CD (without using Nero or ImgBurn or any CD burning program) would destroy the image.

Now with the bootable CD, power ON and boot from your CD drive (bootable CD in the tray). Diagnostics menu will show up on screen and you can choose the test you like.