Need to get to partition on Dell Inspiron 1545. F8 and F11 won't work.?

[Leah]

Dell screen starts up, then black screen of death, then suddenly "Microsoft Corporation," then black screen again. If you ignore it long enough a blue screen OS error appears. I've nearly worn out the F8 and F11 keys. Tried rebooting from the F12 menu from the Dell screen.
How do I get to the recovery partition?

[Niranjan]

Hello leah,

I am from Dell Social Media and Community.

Follow the link below to run a basic hardware test on your system. If you get any error code, you may associate it to the list in the link.

http://support.dell.com/support/topics/g...cid=266787

If the tests pass, follow the link below to fix the OS issue once before you restore your system to factory settings.

http://support.dell.com/support/topics/g...egacy=true
(Change the operating system as per)

Follow the link below to restore your system to factory settings:

http://support.dell.com/support/topics/g...egacy=true
(Change the operating system as per)

If you are unable to access the F8 screen, follow the steps below.

1. Boot the computer using your vista dvd.
2. Select Repair. Then select command line.
3. Go to your recovery drive and then to the tools folder by typing following on the command prompt :

d:
cd tools

4. Then type this on the command prompt :

imagex /apply d:\dell\image\factory.wim 1 c:\

5. This will start the recovery process which will complete itself in 10-15 minutes.
6. Type exit on the command prompt.
7. Reboot your computer from your hard disk.

These above steps are for windows vista, if you have any other operating system the command will change.
Let me know if you need further assistance, I will be glad to help.

Dell-Niranjan
Twitter: @NiranjanatDell