Dell Inspiron 8500 will not boot up

[yoe2270]

Good day.
I had a "friend" download a bunch of crap onto my computer. I went through and started deleting temp files, etc. I fear I ventured into somewhere I should not have been, as I wiped off a lot more than temp files and cookies. The computer shut down and now when it starts, gives me the Dell start up screen. It then gives me a black window that says it missing a file, press F# (I cant remember the exact button off the top of my head) to retry. I press it and it keeps cycling through this. Have I permanently damaged my laptop? It is as simple as putting in the recovery CD? Unfortunetely I dont have that and not sure why it got tossed. Someone told me it may be hardware failure but would it start to boot up if it was? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

[verbob]

You may have inadvertently deleted some necessary system files.

You will either have to reinstall, or repair the installation.

(a repair can be done with XP if you choose the second repair option when booting from an XP CD - Most OEM(NOT retail) CDs will work with Dell)

OR, you can boot from a CD with Norton Ghost and restore it from the recovery partition to the main partition. (I have found that Dells are notorious for "losing" access to their system restore option(CTRL-F10))