Won,t boot up

This may mean that your computer is trying to boot from a non-bootable drive. Try hitting f12 when you restart the computer and select which drive would have your OS on it. You want to change the boot sequence to diskette drive as your 1st choice. The order should be Diskette Drive, Internal HDD, USB storage Device, CD/DVD drive.

When you boot up the laptop press F10 to bring up an list of devices to boot up from, select the CD drive.
OR
Go into the BIOS setup and to the Boot start up and move the CD to the top as the first boot device with the hard disk as the second device.
Your laptop will now boot uo with the Windows Vista installation CD.

If your PC doesn't boot up using the hard drive, you can check that by looking for the F2 or F12 displayed on the screen during boot up. Then start pressing F2 or F12 quickly to get setup.
In setup follow the directions and set your "boot device" to "hard drive"
Hope this is what you needed.

you need to go to the bios while the laptop is starting. usually its one of the "F" keys. and go to boot order or similar option, and change to usb first.

Sounds like either your hard drive is bad or you need to go into your setup by pressing f12 when your screen shows dell when starting up and check your boot order, make sure your hard drive is listed in the boot order, if not your hard drive is fried.. if so , make sure your 1st boot is your hard drive. Also make sure you don't have anything in your cdrom drive or a flash drive in your usb port.

Hope it's just your boot order and not your hard drive!

Press either of F12 or F2 to select the Boot Menu when the computer start with the Dell logo. Select CD/DVD using the arrow keys then Enter. Please comment if the information has been helpful. Thank you and regards.

Hi, in BIOS; do the following: "restart the Computer, and just before the Computer start to load the OS. You must "Press the [F12] button when you here the "Fan" startup, you will also see for a brief moment in the {lower left corner of the screen}. *Press F12 Button to open the {BOOT Setup}. Once the "Boot Manager / Setup / Options" window open, go to the "Boot Device Option," next choose device by [Boot Priority] using the (arrows: Up, Down...) "choose the known booting device," ie: "SATA" Drive. After you have made all the changes; {Press F10 to Save and Exit}. To finalize the configuration change, the Computer will "Reboot." "I hope this information help, give a "Rating" if so, this is the way Fix' Ya work; I help, my reward is a rating on how helpful the "solution is / was," thanks!"

Restart the computer, and read the first message (white text on a black background), hoping that it says something like "press F1 to enter BIOS setup, press F12 to select boot priority".

If it does, press F12, and then select the CD-ROM device as the "bootable" device.

your hard drive has failed, on boot (dell splash screen) press f12 to bring up boot menu, choose diagnostics option, run this and it should confirm hard drive failure on dst short test (drive self test) and give an error code (e.g 2000 - 0142), trust me on this i am a dell field service engineer

the hard drive may be bad. try re-partitioning the drive. if that doesn't work the hard drive will need to be replaced. if you still have warranty dell will replace it for you for free. www.dell.com/support. if you do not have warranty you will need to buy a new one for your computer. best buy sells them cheap. thank you for using fixya