Hi Rob,

Welcome to the Community. Have you tried restoring back to factory settings. Use the below link for help.

PC Restore : support.dell.com/.../document

PC restore using CD : support.dell.com/.../document

Manually Reinstall Windows : support.dell.com/.../document

Hope this helps.

Thank you

Royan

Hi,

Thank you for your advice.

Unfortunately I still can't get this to work. It is behaving really eratically; every time I turn the laptop on it still does the 'non-system disk inserted...press any key' thing. However, once I have done that, windows will almost always boot normally. The problems being a) I downloaded an automatic windows update - Windows 7 64 bit SP1 - and that totally broke it again, meaning I couldn't get back into windows. This has since rectified itself, but only through my constantly turning it off and on again until it works!

As I only got it last weekend, what I would most like to do is re-install windows and start again ( unless this is a hardware issue... but that seems too much of a coincidence). When I put in the Windows 7 recovery disk and boot from the DVD drive, it goes to the 'windows is loading files' screen and then gets stuck, before turning the laptop off after a few minutes.

When I was successfully in windows, I tried inserting the disk and going through thoses options, but it asked me where I want to install the new version - do I install it in the recovery partition? I don't want to overwrite something important!

Thanks,

Rob

Thanks a lot for this - glad I'm not the only one! Will have a proper look at it in the morning (UK time here!) and hopefully will be able to make some sense of it - much appreciated  

Firmware updates are not drivers and should never be applied without a good reason such as instructed by a support tech. Those can make hardware fail. You should not have downloaded any drivers or firmware from the download site. Laptops already have all the necessary drivers and rarely need updates. The drivers listed on the site are mostly for reinstalling drivers, not updating. The exception is the bios updates and even those can cause problems or brick your computer. Next step is to contact dell support for warranty support..

And thank you Mary G - yeah unfortunately I had no idea about that! I am by no means an expert, I knew the BIOS had to be updated and my thinking was the other downloads on the dell page could only make things better. That's a mistake I won't be making again.

I do find it strange that one little download can mess things up so much, and I can't just wipe everything and start again. I would have thought that unless a piece of hardware physically breaks there is always a way back...

Here's another thread with the same problem!

en.community.dell.com/.../19439787.aspx

You did nothing wrong...the update was recommended to be performed. Problem is the update causes problems  and someone from Dell should pull the firmware upgrade  from the download site until a resolution is found.

Is anyone from Dell listening? And why is this thread hidden from everyone else?

en.community.dell.com/.../20067364.aspx