I have the dell mini 10 pc notebook and when I turn it on it looks like it is booting up but then it goes to a black screen with the cursor flashing and shows operating system not found. The computer is only a year and a half old.

do wut it tells u, check cable

That cursor indicated that the BIOS can't find an Windows installed on the hdd. Since even the recovery partition appears to be inaccessible the only thing left is to reinstall it using the recovery cd that should have come with it when you bought it If you don't have it you can order it from Dell.

I HAD HE SAME PROBLEM
IT SEEMS YOUR HARD DRIVE IS DEAD
NOW ORDER A NEW SATA HARD DRIVE AND REINSTALL THE WINDOW
IT WORKS

- it seems that your notebook is not booting to windows
- try to restart and hit F8 to boot to last known good configuration
- you might want to remove peripherals attached to your notebook
- if you can't boot to last known good configuration, try safe mode
- if you can boot to safe mode with networking, perform a system restore and select system schedule checkpoint
- if you can't perform system restore, then you might end up losing your files and perform a dell pc restore
- to perform a dell pc restore go to support.dell.com

Hi

it may be worth trying the F12 key at startup it may work for you

good luck


or try the F8 key on start-up and try the back to last known good configuration

when the cursor comes up type windows and hit enter. if it stays at the cursor type dir then enter and look to see whats in the directory of your pc. you can try using some of the help keys there to see if you can get back to windows. if nothing happens the you will need to reinstall windows.

see if you can get into the boot bios
and if that is stable
then it is time to flush reload op sys

It may be because of your hard disk damage or OS problem. Try to install a fresh copy of XP from a cd. boot from XP cd and install . 

In this case you have to do the PC restore . you can do that in dell machines by shutting down the machine and when it is coming back on just HOLD DOWN THE CTRL ket and the START HITTING f11 key in this case you will lose the data which you have the on the c drive but this issue will get resolved .

Else you can try to restart in the safe mode with networking and then go to the system restore and then select the bold dates in which you have idea you system was working fine . selct the date and then do the system restore . In this case you will not lose the data but you will lose the updates which you have done after that date .

in both the cases system will work .

simple, insert the CD XP boot it on using it, then repair wait for a moment, then it give you options which is either to repair your OS or install it again. thats it