You might want to do a google search and see if there's a way to change your bios boot temporarily. My thinkpad does this and i hear that quite a few laptops maybe do. sorry I can't be more specific. If you think your laptop might be pretty easy to reconfigure from the bios, you could try going to a laptop list or one for your Dell computer and asking about it. when the person helping me with my computer messed up my boot options, somebody on the thinkpad list sent me detailed step-by-step instructions for getting into the bios and changing boot. Of course, I had to do it a few times because I didn't know which boot option was at the top and I just kept having to do it until I'd tried all the options. When none of them got my cdrom working i surmised it was disabled and had to go down what I knew was the list and space to change the enable/disable switch on each one--then my cdrom was the only thing that worked and i could boot from hd but after that I was able to go and change options one at at time until my cdrom and hard drive both worked and cdrom boot was the preferred choice. it sounds a bit complicated but step by step it wasn't bad. You would just need somebody who knows the bios of that machine well and is good at directions. The temporary boot change would be simpler if it is available. This may not be too helpful but it's the only idea i have at the moment. -- Cheryl "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."
