Chuck are you there please?

[Prudie]

My laptop is 'broken'. An overnight update of Windows 7 failed to complete and now I'm in a loop of 2 screens 1. start normally or startup repair (neither work) and lead to 2. Boot manager, insert disc (which I don't have) and the message
status 0xc000000f and 'the boot selection failed because a required device is inaccessible'
Is there anything you can suggest to help, like get to a restore option for example?
It's Dell Inspiron 1545 if that's relevant

[ChuckFickens]

First thing to try is make sure you've got no disks in the CD drive and remove any USB devices connected to the computer and try again.

if that doesn't work it might be easiest to do a full factory restore, which will delete everything off the hard drive and take the computer back to how youo first got it. on dells thats normally started by tapping F8 as soon as it switched on...
http://support.euro.d..._362066&isLegacy=true

Although I'v seen some dells where the restore is accessed by pressing CTRL and F11 during startup too.
Although

[ChuckFickens]

OH also before trying a restore, try tapping F12 at startup, which should bring up the boot order menu and select the hard drive and see if that works, if it does then you'll have to go into the BIOS by tapping F2 at start up, find the boot order setting and change it in there so the hard drive is the first device as default.

[Prudie]

Took the mouse out and the same. None of the Fn buttons will do anything. If I found the disk (in the loft maybe) will that solve it?
A factory restore will mean I lose everything won't it - photos etc. Now I wish I'd got round to that back-up.

[Prudie]

F12 takes me straight to Pre-boot system assessment build 4118. I did this earlier and it stopped halfway with this message - Error code 0F00133C, no suitable disk media is present. If I abort this testing I go straight back to the original 2 screens.

[bazwillrun]

"A factory restore will mean I lose everything won't it - photos etc."

the only way round that would be to take it to a lap top "specialist" who will take the HDD out and should be able to grab your files and put them on DVD or flashfdrive or whatever you want.

Depends how valuable the files you want are.

Or If you can get hold of an original Windows disk do a re-install, you may get out of trouble, when it installs it will ask you if want to make a new partition to install to, which will leave the current installation intact so thats one option, it also if you re-install on the current partition will make a folder called Windows old, which will have your files if they were saved to the Windows default locations in My documents.

[bazwillrun]

When I say original Windows disk I dont mean the Dell Windows disk , because they sometimes dont give you the same options as an original Windows disk from MS.

Dell usually customise their versions so you may not see the same options on re-install

[Prudie]

I've been in loft and retrieved Dell drivers and utilities disc which is all that came with it but when I insert it nothing happens, F8, F11 and F12 do nothing but take me back to those 2 screens and Dell support isn't open on Sundays.
This has ruined my day....

[Prudie]

Dell support say the hard drive has failed and that the update failed because the HD had gone (how that can happen when I'd been using it all day I don't know). Anyway I'm really really upset now. If I took it to PC World would they be able to recover my files before I got a new drive? please someone reassure me.