this has happened before and i called Dell and they got it fixed. he had me pop in the windows disk and repair. my question is when the disk is in the drive and the cop i booting up what F key do i hit? or of any one out there can help me with this wothout the windows disk would me great. and can someone tell me how to prevent this from happening. also i found out that the system restore doesnt work when i see this happen. thanks in advance.