I was given a laptop to fix after somebody else looked at it. The person before me fully formatted the hard drive. He done this without seeing if the laptop had an image type press a function key to reinstall the OS and drivers or seeing if you had to make restore disks. The laptop is a Dell Inspiron 1545 and came with Windows Vista home basic installed. The model number is 1545-7373. The Dell service tag is GFX09H1.
So by the time I got the laptop it had no OS on, no install image on the hard drive (as far as I can tell) and no restore disks. Luckily the Vista install serial key is under the battery.
I have tried 3 different Vista home basic install disks including a Dell OEM Vista home basic install disk.
When I run the install disk I get the windows is loading files progress bar which goes ok. Then I choose the language, time etc and agree to the license terms. I then format the hard drive (I have also used the Vista disk to delete the partition, recreate it and then format it). I then start the installation.
It then does the first 4 parts of the install (copying windows files, expanding files, installing features, installing updates). All the first 4 parts get a green tick.
After that the laptop reboots and it says on screen please wait while Windows starts for the first time. It then goes to the 5th part of the installation (completing installation).
By this time the green install bar is about 70% but it never gets any further than that. I assume things are still ok and the laptop has not crashed as the 3 ... after where it says on the screen completing installation keep on moving.
I then wait for ages but the green progress bar does not move any further and stays around the 70% mark. If I move the mouse every 10 minutes or so the screen stays ok and it looks like it is carrying on with the install. This afternoon I left it on the completing installation stage for 2 hours and the progress bar did not move over the 70% mark.
I then tried to have another go at installing it. I went for my evening meal and left it at the completing installation stage. After about 1 hour I came back to the laptop and the screen was blank/black. I tried moving the mouse and pressing a key but nothing happened. I rebooted the laptop and it looked liked it was going to load windows. It had the little bar that moves across the bottom of screen with Microsoft corporation written underneath it when vista first starts to load. However that is all I got. I left it running for about 20 minutes and it did not load windows.
I have checked the BIOS. Went to system configuration > sata operation and AHCI is the option that has a dot next to it.
So my next thought was to check if the hard drive has problems.
