Hi

Got a Dell Inspiron 1525 running Windows Vista Home Premium

I’m trying to reinstall the operating system with the supplied restore discs. As per the supplied instructions, I used the ‘Reinstall MediaDirect 3.5’ disc to partition the hard drive with all of the hard-drive for the operating system. This was completed within a few seconds.

Then I inserted the operating system reinstall disc, and went through the Dell instructions, selected F12 on startup, chose to boot from CD / DVD, but the computer then just sits at a black screen with a flashing cursor in the top left, and makes no further progress. The CD sounds as if it is repeatedly starting / stopping / starting / stopping. The cursor continues flashing for a couple of minutes, then the screen goes off, restarts, goes through to Dell DOS logo, then tries to boot off the CD again. It continues to cycle like this every couple of minutes but won’t go any further. (The instructions titled ‘reinstalling Dell MediaDirect’ are not very clear about the use of the MediaDirect disc, operating system disc, and (especially) the drivers & utilities disc).

If I remove the CD, and start the laptop, it will go to the Dell DOS logo, display briefly F2=Setup / F12=Boot Menu, and then restart itself. This cycle is repeated every 6-7 seconds, with no further progress made.

Any advice?