Hello PC Forum,


My sister's PC indicated that no hard drive was found when booting her Dell Inspiron laptop. I instructed her to order a new one, and I replaced it. It is recognized in the BIOS. I was able to partition and format the drive without a problem. I installed Windows XP Pro, and there were no apparent issues. No Dell drivers have been installed.

When booting the PC, I get a text filled blue screen. It indicates that Windows will not load in order to prevent damage to the computer, and that the issue could be related to new hardware or new software. Very vague. I am able to boot in safe mode without a problem.

Any ideas on how to proceed would be highly appreciated.

Thank you,
Willybobo

You will need to install those drivers Willybobo. That is probably causing your trouble.

LC

Open your Device Manager
click on View ... Show hidden devices

Click on and Delete (with the Delete key) any devices that have a ? or ! in front of them.
If the Device Manager has an "Other" device category, open it and Delete any devices in the "Other" category.
Now, reboot.

The reboot will force Windows to refind the deleted devices and hopefully see them for what they are.
After rebooting, give Windows time to locate and properly install the deleted devices.

Go to the Device Manager and verify that all your devices are listed correctly.

Thank you Lord Chance and Gandalf.

Unfortunately, my sister no longer has the driver disk. Can drivers be installed in safe mode? They are on the Dell website, and I was able to locate several of them with the service tag. Which ones are essential?

I went to the device manager and deleted the specified items to no avail. Same message "Invalid Work Que Item" upon reboot. Should the drivers be installed before deleting the bad devices?

You need all the drivers for the devices you have on the computer.
You must have some of the drivers installed or you would not be able to enter the Safe mode.

If you know how, you can download/save the drivers from the Dell website with one computer, then install them onto your other computer.

There are 94 drivers listed for this PC on dell. The last time I reinstalled XP on another machine, I was able to boot the full version before installing drivers. Isn't it standard to install the OS before installing the drivers?

Would you happen to know if Dell would send me the original drivers CD? Downloading all of them one by one seams very cumbersome. What is the best way to go about this?

I am unable to find drivers that specifically match her components for the drivers listed for her laptop on the Dell site. Shame on her for loosing that disk! I will have here contact Dell to obtain the CD...