I have a Dell Inspiron 17R 5720 that I bought a couple weeks ago. A few days ago I was updating some system updates, and the computer re-booted itself after installing and quit working. After the Dell logo the screen just goes black and stays that way. I did some research and found that this was a problem for this specific model, and when trying to update it corrupts the BIOS so it can’t restart. I read the solution was to use a Windows 8 recovery bootable DVD or flash drive to fix it, then update the BIOS with an updated BIOS version.
I did not have a Dell Windows 8 recovery disk, so I read that I could download the .ISO and use Windows 7 USB DVD Download Tool to extract it to a flash drive or dual-layer DVD. I used my older laptop which I bought the Dell to replace (Compaq dual-core running Vista 32 bit) to find and download the .ISO and MS install tool to try and create a bootable Dell Windows 8 recovery disk.
I did not have any dual-layer DVDs, so I used a flash drive which I read had to be greater than 4 GB. I also read that the flash drive had to be formated to FAT32 instead of NTFS so I did that first. After formatting to FAT32 I tried using the Windows 7 USB DVD Download Tool to create a bootable flash drive, but it gave me errors that it wouldn’t work. I read another option I could try was to use a program that would mount the .ISO file as a virtual drive so I could copy the files from it manually to the flash drive. I installed a recommend program so I could mount the .ISO and copy the files to my 8 GB flash drive. It said it would take over 4 hours to copy the files, so I left it to copy while I went to bed for the night.
The next morning I saw that my older computer had rebooted itself sometime in the night (Guessing after installing some system updates) and I wasn’t sure if it had finished copying all the files to the flash drive before it rebooted, but I didn’t want to take 4+ more hours to re-copy them all.
I did some more reading to see if I could shrink the files somehow to fit the recovery files from the .ISO onto a regular DVD since I didn’t have any dual-layer disks, and I read that I could do that if I left out the language folder from inside the .ISO when I copied it. I thought this would be good to try as a second option, so I mounted the .ISO and copied all the files except the language folder to a blank DVD and closed the DVD session. I tried rebooting the Dell with the disk I made, and the USB drive and neither is working.
I thought I might need to change the boot order, so I re-booted and hit F2 to load the BIOS settings. I tried some recommended changes I read, but nothing worked. If I changed any of the settings under the boot tab and rebooted, it would say “operating system not found!” or something like that.
I think I have figured out that I need to go to the “add boot option” selection, but it won’t let me add a boot option so I can tell it to boot from the USB. So, this is where I’m stuck. I can’t boot from the DVD or USB, and it won’t let me change the BIOS settings so I can. What do I do now? I can provide more info or pics of the screen if needed. Thanks.
