Dell Inspiron 1545 wont boot

[atlanticdaddy]

My son dropped my laptop today. I have an Inspiron 1545 which, now will POST and I can get through BIOS setup with no problems. But, all it will do when trying to boot id give me the microsoft screen with the sliding bar. I'm running Vista Premium (well, was running it) SP1. I tried running the startup repair with no change, also tried booting from the OS CD. All the same. System appears to freeze on the microsoft screen

[caperjack]

hi, it likely broke something in the fall .What broke, will be nothing but a guess with out looking at the laptop upclose

[mjdodd]

was it running when dropped, although this is not a certainty it rather sounds as though you have had what is known as a head crash, that is the read>/write head of the hard disk has actually been force (by the drop) to touch the actual surface of the hard disk(normally it flies over it and lands in a safe place (or is lifted off). in such cases the touching of the head against the disk damages the disk surface and it cannot read any files at that point and it is quite possible that this point is the start up files!

If this is the case then a reformat and re-install is the only option as in the reformatting it will mark the damaged part as unusable and not use it again. Hope his works

M

[atlanticdaddy]

Thanks for the reply. I was thinking the same problem. After the system sat for almost an hour trying to boot, the startup repair utility came on and started fixing drive errors. This seemed to fix the problem cause now it works.