Dell Won't Boot Past Windows Splash Screen

My friend asked me to help him repair his Dell P28F Inspiron. It gets past the Windows splash screen then it sits at a black screen with a moveable cursor. Not the blinking I cursor in the top left. Just a regular cursor that can be moved. I tried all his recovery options/diagnostic tools and a lot of different commands in the F8 Repair boot with command prompt section. I told him a couple moths ago how to get his Microsoft key but he put it in a text file on his desktop. I turn the computer over and it says it comes with Windows 8. I ask what version of windows was on the laptop. He says MS windows 7 Home Premium. I ask why. He says hard drive crashed so he took it to someone's shop for a new hard drive and that person put 7. I ask him to call them and get restore disks. He tried and they are no longer in business. He is out of warranty. The disks I have, if helpful My HP System Recovery DVD Windows 7 recovery media for windows 7 products SP1 2 disks and not sure where I got this one but it says Dell drivers and utilities for reinstalling dell inspiron and dell xps computer software contents device drivers and diagnostics and utilities. Drive X: volume is boot, Drive D: no lable, Drive C: System Reserved and E: not ready so it may be the DVD drive. 1st thing I did was I took the battery out and booted. Then ran his recovery options in F8 and F12. It does not recognize a backup or recovery. Then tried some commands. Please let me know if there is anything more I can do. Thank you in advance.

 

Make sure NOTHING is connected to a USB port AND no media is in the optical drive AND there are no SD cards in the slot (if one) when you boot the computer. Does it then load Windows and get to the log-in screen?

 

There is nothing connected to the USB port and no media in the optical drive nor SD cards in the slot.

 

Will it boot to the DVD drive if a bootable CD/DVD is in it (F2 at POST Screen to enter UEFI/BIOS Setup -> change Boot order so CD/DVD is first)?

 

Yes, it will boot to a bootable CD/DVD.

 

If he didn't get a Windows 7 COA from that shop, it may be a pirated copy and the product key he saved would be useless. However, his Windows 8 product key is embedded in the BIOS. Download the Windows 8 ISO with this tool: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows8
You can then burn it on a DVD or load it on a USB stick to install. The installer will detect his embedded key and activate automatically. I believe if you go with the upgrade that it will save his old files to a special folder. Of course, this is not a standard scenario, so it may not.

If he wants to recover his files he's saved before doing anything else, I recommend Puppy Linux. It's a small OS that will boot off a CD or USB stick. If it can read the HDD, you can use it to copy the files he wants saved to a USB stick or CD/DVD (It will run in RAM so you can remove the CD you booted from). It's similar enough to Windows that there isn't a steep learning curve. http://puppylinux.org/main/Overview and Getting Started.htm

 

@Just Playin ,

Your link to a "tool" takes you to a VigiLink shopping site which you have to dismiss before going to the page for Windows 8.1. I believe the OP's friend's computer was running Win 8.0 when the hard drive went away and was replaced with a drive containing Win 7. The OP states that the Win 7 Product Key was saved as a text file which could be recovered with Puppy Linux and saved elsewhere.

@helpmeplease2 ,

With the computer you're posting from, go here:

http://mirror.corenoc.de/digitalrivercontent.net/

Select the Version, language and architecture of Win 7 you need for your friend's computer and burn it to DVD. Boot your friend's computer with it and select Repair.

 

Thank you JustPlayin and mdonah.
mdonah,
I would like to try what I think is the easiest first. I am partially unfamiliar with your instructions so I would like to make sure I will be doing this correctly please. I went to the "mirror.corenoc.de" site. I have never been to a torrent? site before. I chose "x17-58997.iso" link, right clicked "Save target as". It saved as an .iso.torrent in half a second. (I tell you it saved in half a second as I thought it wouldn't be so quick.) Do I then choose "Rename" and remove the ".torrent"? Then look up how to burn an .iso? Then burn it to a DVD (as the looked up instructions will tell me)? Then insert the disk with "boot from CD/DVD" option chosen and follow on screen prompts until I get to the "Repair" option? He is ok with losing everything. Thanks in advance

 

JustPlayin,
That puppylinux is interesting. Its going in my tools. Thank you.

 

To download those ISOs, you need a BitTorrent client. I recommend qBittorrent. The .torrent file you downloaded contains information to tell a BitTorrent client how to connect to others who have already downloaded a full copy or even just part and are available to share that with you.

 

No torrent needed if you use a program from the MajorGeeks site.
http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/microsoft_windows_iso_download_tool.html

I've used this several times to download ISOs.

 

@helpmeplease2 ,

I didn't realize that the author of the site I linked you to had changed the http downloads to torrent downloads (sorry about that — it's been a while since I downloaded Windows 7 ISOs from there).

Use the tool plodr kinked you to. It's simple enough and requires no installation.

Once you've downloaded the ISO of the correct Version (Home Premium), language (English) and architecture (32-bit OR 64-bit), proceed with:

Question: Just to be sure, when you say "Splash Screen", do you mean the screen that says Starting Windows and the four color Windows Logo appears?

 

interesting, just last week, a dell at my work place started doing this exact same thing. it's an older dell tower with xp on it.
basically, you push the power button, it turns on, bios screen shows, some other screen shows, windows splash screen shows 'loading personal settings', the cursor shows up, and then the screen goes black. all the while, you can listen and hear the computer and hard drive make all the normal sounds... so the computer sounds like it boots normally, to the windows desktop, it just can't display the desktop, and shows a blank, black screen with a normal movable mouse cursor.

i swapped out the video card, changed monitors, used a wired keyboard and mouse instead of its wireless keyboard and mouse... ran memtest and RAM is fine... all to no avail. same behavior - fully booted computer with a blank black screen.

only thing i know to do now is to restore an image i have of the computer. hopefully, that will fix whatever problem windows developed.

good luck with it.

 

Windows 7 SP1:

https://1drv.ms/f/s!Aus47WpmlzFPgSpTAMgwUz11pB1y

 

follow up to my little problem...

i restored an image i had of that workstation...
and lo and behold... it worked and the computer is acting normally, like nothing was ever wrong with it.
so windows had borked itself some how. who knows what had gone wrong. yea.

 

Unfortunately, in Post #1, the OP states that there is no backup/recovery image. That's why I told him to download a Win 7 ISO, burn to DVD, boot from it and go to Repair. He can then go to Restore Points created by Win 7 and hopefully regain full functionality.