Computer Help

I suggest you go over to WindowsSevenFourms Join the group and post your question/problem there. When you join be sure to complete the System Specs section.

There are a lot of IT professionals there that are more then willing to help. It's free and they know there stuff.

Safe mode.
go to start button
in search type msconfig
go to the start up area in there

unselect things that shouldn't be booting just watch out for items like your track pad, sound card etc

Download AVG and Malwarebytes or some other program. Run those in safe mode.

If that doesn't fix your issue then consider blanking everything and reformatting.

Also make sure your browser doesn't have tool bars and add ons most people have tons of those running and they are all spyware / crapware / virus laden garbage.

You can also check your program uninstall list for them.

You need to do some reading.

MS Imaging and Restore.

When is the last time you backed up the drive to a MS image? Pay attention to what this does. You will lose data and programs from the date of last backup. If you have not backed it up, you will have nothing to restore.

If you want to fix this your self, I'd suggest downloading AVG, Avast, Adaware, SuperAntiSpyWare and MBam (Malware Bytes). I'd use MBam first. These all have free versions and are pretty good.

If you can't find the issue yourself, why not take it to a PC shop. If it is a virus copying files may just transfer it to a new drive. If it is not, the PC shop can replace the drive and recover files for you.

"Image Backup" is what Win7 calls it. It's accessed through the Control Panel, according to the help info, it can be used to restore the complete system.

You may have caught a virus.. This laptop did (however as I recall safe mode did not work either)

Try this.. Get a command prompt you can do this by getting the boot menu and choosing "Safe mode with command prompt"

Type dir /s
and press return

Let me knwo.. Do you see a whole bunch of stuff flying by, or basically nothing.

If nothing type: Attrib *.* /s

Now you should get a bunch of stuff (NOTE For faster recovery omnit the /s)

Is ther a letter "H" on the start of each line or an "A"

If it is an A stop reading now I can't help you

IF it is an H.. Then you caught the same virus this one had. And your computer is in the same condition mine was when my daughter said "If you can get it working it's yours" I did, it is.

Type attrib *.* -h /s

NOTE: This will take a while, you have thousands of files it needs to edit most of them, and it will too.
Get a cup of coffee

Update your antivirus and fire wall soon as you get back.

What does "image backup" mean. If it is truely an image, it is probably not in a format to boot from. That is not the same as a mirrored copy. An image is usually a single (or multuple spans) file which contains a compressed "image" of a logical drive. An image is used to restore (or rewrite) a computer from the image taken at a specific time. Dell places a restore file in a second (partition) logical drive, to restore the base operating system. If this is the type of image, none of your data or self installed software will be in that file, unless you have created a new "image" since you have owned the computer. What software is being used to create the image.

If it is a bootable (2nd) drive, are all of your files on it? If it is a mirror of the 1st boot drive, when was the mirror created? Is it a raid?

Sorry to ask a bunch of dumb questions but just getting a new HD is rarely as easy as it seems.

Update: First it's not a Latitude, but a "Studio" (Latitude was my old one).
The computer finally booted up, after 20-25 minutes. I uninstalled some programs that had recently been installed, just in case.
Then I ran Dell diagnostics, and it tells me the hard drive is dying! So I will have to get a new drive, or change to my #2 drive, hope the "image backup" works.

trop-a-cal wrote:
What WIFI or MYFI or land line are you using?

What has that got to do with boot up of computer?

wilpower wrote:
Thanks for the answers. We are traveling, and maybe the ND roads shook it's brains too much!
I'm writing this on my old computer (can you say slow), we access internet with Vz MyFi, but the computer never gets to make a connection.
I will attempt to start it again, and just let it go.

Normally, if there's an auto-update, or configuring Windows after applying updates, you'll see a warning not to shut down until it's finished. Still, won't hurt anything to let it perk for awhile to see what happens.

If you wait an hour and still have no icons, boot back into safe mode. Run msconfig, go to the startup tab and start unchecking stuff. Hardly anything in startup is really required to run Windows. If that gets you running again, then you can add startup items back, one at a time until you find the one that breaks it again.

Thanks for the answers. We are traveling, and maybe the ND roads shook it's brains too much!
I'm writing this on my old computer (can you say slow), we access internet with Vz MyFi, but the computer never gets to make a connection.
I will attempt to start it again, and just let it go.