i recently tried to to s full system restore on my sons laptop using the back up discs only to have, at 98% an error message 0x4001100200001005 pop up, to clear this the install aborted. i now have a black screen after the dell logo goes and i cant do a thing with it. i have tried to start in safe mode but f8 doesn't respond, f2 & f12 does but i'm not sure how to use f2 to get windows working and f12 doesn't seem to be useful. can anybody help please?

You could try the recovery disks again. I suppose that they must be bootable. Use F12 to boot from the recovery disk. (It is used to set the boot order, one time, rather than chaning the boot order in the BIOS setup.) Insert the first recovery disk in the machine, and restart it. Press F12 and choose to boot form the optical drive. However, it sounds like the recovery disks may be corrupt, so you may have to resort to the restore partion. All Windows PCs are supposed to be sold with a means of restoring the operating system. Dell probably uses a hidden restore partition. I don't own a Dell, but it appears that you start the recovery by ctrl-F11 at startup. WARNING: this will restore the state that it was in from the factory. All files, installed programs, etc. will be lost.

On Sat, 2 Jul 2011 14:57:31 +0000, kingfishers15 wrote: i recently tried to to s full system restore on my sons laptop using the back up discs only to have, at 98% an error message 0x4001100200001005 pop up, to clear this the install aborted. i now have a black screen after the dell logo goes and i cant do a thing with it. i have tried to start in safe mode but f8 doesn't respond, f2 & f12 does but i'm not sure how to use f2 to get windows working and f12 doesn't seem to be useful. can anybody help please? Are you talking abut recovery disks provided by your computer's manufacturer (or burned by you from the recovery partition they created) or are you talking about System Restore (a Windows feature and something completely different)? Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP

thank you for your reply. i have tried the recovery discs several times but to no avail. As f8 doesn't work and nothing happens with any of the options on f12 i have tried f2 but cant seem to get any where with this either. the problem is, if the discs are corrupt i dont know how to start up the laptop as all i have is a black screen with a flashing " hyphon " in the top left of the screen

hi, thanks for replying. i am on about the recovery discs which we made after being prompted when we first used the computer

On Wed, 6 Jul 2011 16:05:54 +0000, kingfishers15 wrote: hi, thanks for replying. i am on about the recovery discs which we made after being prompted when we first used the computer OK, then please don't call it "System Restore," which it isn't and will only confuse people trying to help you. You should contact Dell and ask them what the problem is. Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP

ok point taken. what is it called then? i am not a computer geek if i was i wouldn't need to go on this forum. I'm trying to get help to get my sons laptop working, and dell want £120 to tell me how to do this.

On Wed, 6 Jul 2011 20:08:46 +0000, kingfishers15 wrote: ok point taken. what is it called then? It's called a recovery disk, as you called it in your last message. Again, it's something provided by your manufacturer, not a Windows function, which is what System Restore is. i am not a computer geek if i was i wouldn't need to go on this forum. Understood. That's why I was tying to make you understood the correct terminology. Not to give you a hard time, but if you use incorrect terminology when asking a question, you run the severe risk of confusing those trying to help and therefore getting incorrect answers. I'm trying to get help to get my sons laptop working, and dell want ?120 to tell me how to do this. Wow! That's a lot of money. I am not very familiar with the specifics of Dells, but post the Dell model number here, and perhaps someone else can get you going. Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP