I agreed to look at this for a friend. Its a Dell Latitude 3330. It came pre loaded with Win7. It does not have a CD Drive.
When you power it on, It goes to Windows error recovery. “Windows failed to Start, a recent hardware or software change might be the cause”. Then I can choose start Windows normally or launch startup repair.
If I choose startup repair it asks me to insert Windows installation disk. But there is no CD Drive or disk.
If I choose “Start Windows normally”, it goes to the starting windows splash screen, then briefly flashes the BSOD and back to windows boot manager.
I pulled the HD and connected it via eSATA to my PC, and all the files seem to be in order.
No hardware changes have been made. I’m thinking a BIOS setting. So I set BIOS to defaults and it does the same thing.
So friend said, this is just a secondary laptop, if you want, just load Ubuntu or something on it. So I tried to install Ubuntu by booting from a flash drive and I get ‘Invalid partition’
Tried Safe mode. I get the safe mode menu, but again it starts loading then flashes BSOD and back to repair menu. I tried Safe mode, Last known good configuration etc.
Throwing Windows aside, I cant figure why it wont allow me to boot from USB?
ok, it looks like USB booting is off by default, so that explains it. Enter the bios, go to onboard devices, find the USB device, and change the option from NO BOOT to BOOT. Save and exit.
Now, if you can create a bootable USB key with Windows 7 install media, you can do what I suggested above.