I’ve got a Dell lappy which I think has a corrupted OS. It starts to boot, but I run into a stop error even under Safe Mode. I’ve run a Dell diagnostic disc which reports a sector it’s unable to read.
It might be a damaged drive or just the fact that the drive is encrypted by whole disc encryption. I would like to run chkdsk.exe, but I’ve lost my boot floppy with it on.
Any suggestions?
Not sure of your lappy, But, If you try rebooting the comp try pressing either F8 or F12 and it should take you to the dianostic/test. I recently had similar prob and it tested that the HD was soon to fail. Went online and got a 350 gb HD for $ 68.00 plus s/h. Removed the 2 screws holding the hd in place and replaced. Now after reinstall of OS all is working well. The lappy is now being stress tested with boinc at 80% CPU.:xfinger: Day 4 and the cpu is at 140 Degrees and stabile.
Lappy is a Dell inspiron 1526
Sorry my fault. I tried that, but it didn’t find any fault, which is why I think it’s a corrupt OS and not a hardware fault. This is a Dell D830
windows repair would be where I would go. boot from cd, repair install, hope for the best 
Found my chkdsk floppy and tried that, no good. Trying UBCD disk check at the mo. If the drive itself proves OK I will try a repair from a Dell boot CD, but the images on these machines are a proprietary build and the encryption may prevent a repair too (it’s a government laptop), if no good it looks like the guys are going to have to wipe and re-image it 
Drive no good, so they are building a replacement. Thanks for your help guys. 