Dell laptop dvd problem

[pokerking]

hi, i have a dell inspiration laptop, windows was working fine on it, i turned it all off as i usually do, turned it on next day and windows didnt start, just froze. I can start it in safe mode, but no other way. My first though was to boot from my windows cd and repair windows.....when i tried this my laptop wont boot from the cd....upon looking at the boot settings in my bios, the cd has an exclamation mark by it, so i pressume there is something wrong with it...any ideas how i can get it working again so i can boot from my cd?!?!? thanks for reading this post.

[dave87]

Do you get the option to select a one time boot menu on the Dell Inspiron laptop? If so, there should be a diagnostics option, which you can then use to test the CD/DVD drive. If it gets an error code, you can then use that to get Dell to repair it (or post it here, one of the members might know what's wrong and be able to advise you).

Out of interest, how old is the laptop?

Dave

[Digitizer]

Try tapping F12 at boot up it will take you to a one time boot menu.
You will have several choices one of which is dell diagnostics here you should be able to check if there's a problem with the dvd drive.
Also you might want to try reseating the dvd drive there's a little tab on the righthand side of the drive if you push this in it should pop out then if you pull on it the drive will come out.
If the tab doesn't pop out the theres a small screw just under the laptop where the tab is, Remove this & try again.

[pokerking]

its an inspiration 2500, p3 128meg of ram, i found the cdrom was disabled in the bios, i can now boot form cd, but i have now got a new issue. if i start in safemode, everything is fine.......if i start normally i get the windows boot screen, then my screen goes black. i can hear windows starting and if i use the windows key then press u to turn it off, it turns off, its just i have a black screen??? any ideas, its a pile of rubbish basically!