[vbdietz]

I have a Dell Latitude C640 with Win XP Pro SP3 that's been working just fine. Tried to help out a fellow web designer yesterday in debugging a layout issue and went to change the resolution in Display Settings to see if I could replicate her problem.

It blew up with a BSOD and spent a long time creating a dump.

When I went to reboot, it gave me the normal Dell Bios screen and then went to a black screen with the error message:

Error loading operating system

My cd-rom drive in that laptop is dead which hasn't been a problem as it's not my main development computer. I keep it around to do cross browser checks on WIN XP in older browser versions. I do have a functional floppy drive for it.

I re-powered on and hit F12 and ran the diagnostics there and they completed successfully. I also ran windiag diagnostics from the floppy and it went through 2 passes successfully there.

So I'm guessing that the BSOD blowup corrupted the OS and that I need to boot from an alternate source.

When I use F2 to look at the BIOS setup (it's on version A10), my choices for boot source are:

Diskette Drive
Internal HDD
CD/DVD/CD-RW Drive
Modular Bay HDD
Cardbus NIC
C/Port II or C/Dock II NIC
C/Dock or C/Dock II top PCI slot NIC
C/Dock II Bottom PCI slot NIC
Onboard NIC

I have the Dell Win XP Reinstallation CD but it does me no good since the CD-Rom drive isn't working.

There's no option for a USB flash drive as a boot source.

The Dell is on a wireless network with my HP dv7.

What can I do to get the Dell laptop rebooted with an alternate source?

[ozziebeanie]

External USB DVD burner? I always have one on hand in case a burner decides to play up, or just fail to work at all.

[vbdietz]

okaay. But will it see it as a CD/DVD device or a USB device which isn't an option in this BIOS?

[ozziebeanie]

If your other CD/DVD device can be seen but not working, it should see the external one, it wont see anything till you plug it in, as when I plug my one in, or switch it on, it shows up as a CD/DVD burner.
If its not working, maybe unplug it even if you don't remove it.

http://dell.driversdown.com/dell-dri.../s_553_1.shtml

If you end up re-formatting, this link will have the drivers, on the left as I have already clicked on the make you have.