I can't get access to my computer's welcome screen. I think it has something to do with the hard drive. I can't get past the black screen with codes. It says NTLDR missing. What can I do? What does it mean?

There are a number of stages to go through. For all these please ensure that the laptop is switched off. First, remove the battery, then plug the mains charger lead in and try to boot, if you get past the splash screen than it is the battery at fault, if not then the next step is to switch the laptop off close the lid and turn it over, on the bottom you should see an access door with either one or two screws, open this access panel up and remove the hard drive, turn the laptop back over and try to boot up again, it should go past the splash screen and the detect that there is no hard drive installed, if it dose not get past the splash screen then turn the laptop back over re install the hard drive, try again to boot up, if still no good then try removing one of the memory chips, these are found under the same access panel. Try again if still no go then remove the other memory chip and replace the first one you took out. If no joy after all these steps, then sorry I have no further suggestions. Good luck.

you can take the hard drive out and hook it up to your computer as a slave. a fix it, take out and reinstall.

Hello here is some info about your dell:

http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/desktop/f/3514/p/19342733/19736103.aspx#19736103

Error 0146 indicates a failed/failing hard drive or bad drive sector.
Basically, this means your hard drive will need to be replaced.

Even more here:

http://search.dell.com/results.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=gen&cat=cmu&k=error+code+2000-0146&rpp=12&p=1&rf=all&nk=f&ira=False&~srd=False&ipsys=False&advsrch=False


Here is the home page:

http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/19/Product/studio-1735

A computer repair shop can help you with recover your data if is not damaged by the bad sectors.

I recomend to change the system to windows 7 (32bit) because the support for vista is out by this year.

Good luck

If this is under warranty take it back. If it isn't power the unit on with just the battery powering the unit. When you see the Windows splash screen drop the battery out after the screen goes black put the battery back in and press the power button. This should bring up the on screen menu telling you it failed to start or shut down correctly. Select, Boot in Safe Mode and see if the system will power on. If that fails you need to do a system restore. To access system restore options power the unit on and press and hold the F10 key, this will bring up the restore Windows options. From that menu select to restore your operating system. If that fails you will have to do a complete restore to factory default settings. If that fails you will have to replace the hard drive.

Remove the hard drive from the computer and purchase an external enclosure. Use the hard drive as an external hard drive to access the data.

I had the same thing happen to me. I wound up replacing the hard drive I am still looking to figure the access part to retrieve files though.

ok best thing to do is take it to a office store there they will copy all your files to another hard drive id do this before you tryed any else

If you are getting format errors on the hard drive, the most likely failure point is the HDD itself. If you have tried a known good hard drive, then next item I'd suspect would be the system RAM

it maybe a case that you will need to do a reinstall on it but not 100% sure you should go to the microsoft website in he xp area

If you are unable to access your welcome screen, and it is giving you a hard drive related error, it may be possible either your operating system is corrupt or your hard drive has failed. If you have already tried your recovery disc, your hard drive itself may be at fault.

First, verify that there are no discs in any drives, such as floppy or CD and then try to turn your computer on. If you cannot get to your welcome screen and you get an error about your hard drive, try using your recovery discs. If that doesn't work, you most likely have a faulty piece of hardware in your system, most likely your hard drive.