Windows 7 Pro not booting on Latitude E6420 after taking laptop apart

My son and I took apart my daughters E6420 to replace the silver diecast metal casing around the outer edge of the laptop that was cracked. After we had the entire laptop back together, windows 7 pro would no longer boot. The Windows recovery and repair functions are not restoring windows 7 and I do not have a recover disk to boot from. I only have the OEM windows 7 license key on the tag underneath the battery.

Here is the information provided for the error:Root cause found : unspecified changes to system configuration might have caused the problem

This is shown in the details of the windows file repair attempt.

BIOS is working.

Safe Mode will not boot windows either.

Diagnostics says everything is working properly.

My guess is that we damaged a wire putting the laptop together (but wouldn't there be a problem in the diagnostics)

My other guess is the when we disconnected the cmos battery it reset something in bios or other files in the partition.

I have a second e6420 laptop (same model) that also has windows 7. The only difference between the two laptops is the 2nd e6420 has an SSD drive and a hard drive and the one with the problems just has a 500gb HD. Is there a way to make a recovery disk from the 2nd laptop to restore windows 7 and still use my original OEM license key?

 

Yep, if he unplugged the BIOS battery it reset everything, go into BIOS and try changing the SATA controller to IDE or another mode. Try them all.
Also set the time / date.
If you need a 6420 disk I can look around, I might have one, we leased Dells for a while.

 

Yeah an e6420 disk 64 bit for Windows 7 pro would be a sure fix to match my oem keycode.

Someone gave me a windows 7 home premium disk to borrow and I installed and erased over the windows 7 pro (after unsuccessful repair and restoration). This made things worse. Although Windows 7 home premium appears to be working properly, it requests entry of the key and will not accept the windows 7 pro key that is on the sticker underneath the battery.

No drivers are working to jump on the web with.

At least I now know that the physical machine was put back together properly and that I just have a software issue where I need to match the install with the OEM windows 7 pro key on the sticker.

If you have a windows 7 pro disk that I could borrow that would hopefully solve the issue with my key not working.

Not sure about getting my drivers back. BIOS continues to work but no drivers are being allowed to install on windows from the windows 7 home premium disk (guessing the drivers were all from a dell disk that I also don't have).

 

You need to use your Service Tag on the Dell Support page, another machine, and some type of media to copy at least the Ethernet or WiFi driver to.

After you install at least one of the network drivers, the rest can be downloaded to your machine.

And FYI I have multiple .iso image files for Windows 7 which I saved to an HDD before Microsoft terminated the the Digital River downloads. I have been known to mail people install DVDs...

 

Did you try changing the SATA mode before you reloaded?

I have 6410 & 6430 disks but they are all 32 bit. Sorry.

 

I wiped/formatted the hard drive completely. Downloaded windows 7 pro .iso from torrent and burned to bootable cd on another computer. I was able to successfully install from the cd but the software is asking for the OEM code. Haven't entered it yet. Am wondering if it will accept the key. It is a legitimate license key. OR do I need to be hooked up to the internet to make the license key work when I enter it? I still can't get the wireless driver or the ethernet driver to function.

I have the Intel driver installed but I can't seem to get a driver to match with the Ethernet Controller device or the OEM wireless card.

 

Fixed the problem. Downloaded OEM windows 7 pro from torrent to bootable disk using ios software to burn. Then completedly wiped the hard drive by hooking up to my other pc. Initiated a clean install of windows 7 pro. Then after successful installation i entered my oem windows 7 pro key that was on the sticker underneath the battery.