Thanks! I tried this last night, actually, but it didn't work either. I
went to the Dell website and used their troubleshooter to track down this
potential fix. That threw me into the right section of Microsoft's support
system. Following that Wizard, I downloaded the program onto a flash drive,
transferred that to the "broken" computer, and followed Microsoft's
instructions to get the computer to read from the drive. No dice. I ran
hours worth of other fixes from Microsoft and Dell that were recommended if
each one failed. I Googled the full Stop Error message, ran tons of
protocols, and got it to generate brand new BSOD messages. At last, Dell's
site told me to open up the case and start pulling things out. I didn't add
anything internal, so there was nothing to remove. I'm geek enough to open
up my desktop and add drives, but the laptop is another kettle of fish. Even
my son-in-law who works for Intel and built the desktop for me is not
interested in messing around inside a laptop. At this point, I emailed Dell
and told them I wasn't going to void the warrantee by opening the case. The
next alternative Dell presented is to do a complete system reinstall, which
will remove everything from the c drive. If that fails, they want me to
reformat the hard drive and reinstall everything again, so I figure it's
probably best to reformat before reinstalling. So far, they have not
suggested any way to backup anything that's on the drive.
You guys are fabulous, and I appreciate the help.
