Laptop Freezes When Booting From Disk

Hello,

I am working on formatting the HDD on my sister's Dell Inspiron 1470 and reinstalling Win7. The Win7 disk is in the DVD drive, but the computer will not boot from disk. At the Inspiron splash screen it says to push F12 for boot options, however each time I press F12 it locks up. She's been having problems with this laptop for a while and a System Restore did not help, so we are trying a clean reinstallation and starting fresh.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

Hi Katy. Welcome to Computer Help Forums.
When the keyboard first flashes did you press F2 setup then F12 boot options?
What happens?

 

I pushed F12 first and it froze. I have also tried F2 alone and it also froze.

 

Quick edit, as Allheart posted at the same time, please check what she asks first.

Hi Katy
After a quick chat with DSTM, we both think there may be a problem with the RAM and possibly the connections.
Not too sure how to access the RAM stick or sticks, but in most laptops there is a cover underneath that is held on with one, two, or even three screws. Once the cover is off, I hope it is easy to remove the stick or sticks, clean the strip of contacts on the edge, and then re-insert the ram sticks, that should at least clear up any issues with the contacts.
Hopefully that is all it is.

Let us know if OK or not after that, as there are checks can be done to see if the RAM itself is faulty.

Nev.

 

Thank you to everyone for your help. It is a laptop, so to access the F-keys, Function must also be pressed. I hooked up a desktop keyboard and restarted, hit F-12, and was able to boot from the Win7 DVD. Maybe the Function key is not working properly on the laptop keyboard. HDD has been reformatted and installing fresh now!

 

Thanks for the update,Katy. I should have mentioned to press the f/n key in conjunction with the F keys.
Thinking you were naturally doing that I was beginning to think maybe a hardware issue.
Good luck with the install.

 

Hi Allheart.

My wife had a HP Compaq CQ62 laptop . I found that I had to hold down the Fn key to use the standard F keys while accessing the special functionalities.

Naturally I thought most Laptops were the same.

My Apologies to the member for misinformation in this instance.