My dell 1420 laptop does not startup unless I hold it in my hand and apply pressure to the cassing

The issue could be due to various reasons such as corrupted display drivers.
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that is already defective. you can not use anymore. not unless you replace it with new one.

Restart the computer in Safe Mode with Networking by continuously pressing F8 at Dell logo. Go to the Nvidia website and download the latest drivers for your machine. If you are experiencing no video whatsoever, then either the screen needs to be replaced or a connection is loose or not working behind the screen.

click start....run....msconfig.
in the system configuration window select the startup tab on top right.
click disable all...click apply and ok
restart the system. this should fix the issue

Remove the hard drive the ac battery,the cd rom and the memory.Press and hold the power button for twenty seconds.Replace the power and the memory try again to startup.
Good luck

You need to cheat a little. First try to boot into safe mode by pressing the f8 key as soon as you hit the power (and keeping your fingers crossed on the other hand that it notices your doing this). Before you get too depressed just try booting into safe mode and then reboot normally. That may be all it take to fix it. Try this a few times before getting into the more serious fixes.

If you can get into safe mode you can simply copy your files off to a usb data drive. Those will still work. You may be able to use the wired network card if you select safe mode with network access. But don't count on that. The cd/dvd will not work so you can't burn it to disk. A flash drive will work on the usb while a external hard drive that connect via usb usually won't as it needs drivers.

The other way is to boot using a bootable cd. If you can get a vista install cd you can install over the top of your existing windows and retain your settings. If you don't know where everything is then you need to be a bit creative and use something like the demo Ubuntu cd that boots into a windows like operating system that will allow you to copy stuff over the network to the usb drive or the network.

If you have a friend with the right laptop or desktop you can take the drive out and set it up as a second drive. When they boot normally they then can see your drive and just copy burn or move your stuff. This is what I do in the shop when the existing system is too messed up to work with. There may be the odd thing you won't get access to but you should get most of it.

back up all your files first because everything will be wiped out.

Turn on machine, Put the recovery cd on the cd rom drive, before it boots to windows hit the F1 to go into bios, on the startup set the cd rom the primary to boot machine on cd then follow the instructions from there..

Try starting explorer by going to file\new task (run..) and typing explorer.

If it doesnt work, just type msconfig on the same box and go to startup tab, leaving everything unmarked, just reboot your pc and problem should be solved

hmm that means there are lot of service is running in your computer...try this for starts-

1)open run command
2)type msconfig in run.
3) uncheck all unnecessary program at startup tab then restart system.

now for shutdown pc

try this
1) open run command
2)type regedit
3) search waitforkill registry using ctrl f.
4) increse value of waitforkill like 200 to 20000.

Hi, Most dells sold in the last 4 to 5 years are sold with a recovery partition on the hard drive. what this means is you should not need any disc`s to do a recovery, unless you have replaced the hard drive. A little trick that most people dont know is that you only need to hold down the CTRL and F11 for a few seconds. Remember you need to do it a s soon as the laptop powers up, you should be given a menu asking you if you want to do a repair or full recovery. if you choose full recovery the the laptop will be restored to factory settings.... hope this helps
Tony A