Last night I turned my laptop back on after it was off for approximately 2 hours. It started, loaded up to the desktop screen and then stopped. It showed the desktop design but none of the icons, start menu, toolbars...nothing. It worked fine the 2 hours before. I contacted Dell support, they said my motherboard needs to be replaced. Is this the only solution? How can it work 2 hours before perfectly fine and then just die? If this is the only solution about how much does a motherboard cost...is it worth replacing or should I just get a new laptop?

Thanks,
procto17

Keep in mind that Dell is SELLING that motherboard that (they say) needs to be replaced. What you have there is corrupt windows registry, but not corrupt enough to display an error message upon startup. The thing to do is:
While booting press f8 key and select last known configuration. Hopefully this will restore older registry that worked. Only setback is that you'll need to reinstall the programs that you installed in the meantime.

If same thing happends, try booting from CD (Installation or restore) and restore or renistall the windows.

Yeah I figured as much. I have a degree in Telecommunication (just graduated in May) and I know a little bit about how computers work thanks to the IT classes I took so I was pretty sure it wasn't the motherboard because I don't think the computer would have started at all. I talked to others as well, they said operating system.

Thanks for the input though that helps a lot and saves me a lot of money!