Dell Inspiron Mini 9 Help!

[caz08]

hi everyone, basically i took out an 18month mobile broadband contract with vodafone in september, the dell inpiron mini has worked perfectly until yesterday when i turned on my laptop and got a message saying windows in unable to start please reinstall windows xp ect and their is nothing i can do, the notebook came with disks but obviously because it is a notebook it doesn't come with a cd drive so i emailed vodafone to ask for some help and they directed me to here to ask for some help and they said the laptop will need re-formating

is their anything i can do?

many thanks everyone

[Neil_Brown]

You might be able to use an external USB DVD drive?

[Retired-Daz_V]

Hey Caz08,

It's a shame to hear this

In this case you'll need to either contact Dell to get this sent back for repair, or you'll need to re-install Windows via network install. This latter option can be somewhat... tricky... um... so not something we could really advise on. If you've never done this, I would recommend against.

Unless you can find someone to help or do a network install for you, your easiest route will be to contact Dell and arrange a repair. You can contact them on 0844 3381000.

Let us know if we can help further!


Daz

eForum Team

[Neil_Brown]

I am not sure why you'd want to do a network installation for this (even if the EULA attaching to the supplied CD permits use in this manner) - I'd have thought that reinstalling voa a CD or DVD driver would be far easier?

[tempest3k]

There are various guides out on the net for using a USB stick to reinstall - this may be an easier option if you do not have an external drive to hand (I personally used one to install the Win7 RC for testing).