Why won't my Dell Inspiron 1520 laptop let me re-install the OS?

[Schwaan666]

Hi I recently formatted my Dell Inspiron 1520 laptop as I wanted to restore it to it's factory settings as the laptop had gotten extremely slow. So I went though the steps of formatting the HD and re-installing the OS, everything seemed to go smoothly, I didn't get any error messages, but the process didn't work. I've tried it about 5 times now, there must be something I'm doing wrong, but haven't a clue what it could be and I would appreciate some help, thank you.
Hi again, thanks for the replies - I couldn't figure out how to reply to the answers individually so I'm adding some more details in the hope of answering everyone's questions.

@SimplyRed - my OS is windows Vista and it came with the laptop, never been used until today. I formatted all partitions before installing manually, I did that for the first two tries and than decided to delete the partitions and make new partitions and that didn't seem to make a difference. I didn't alter anything in my BIOS - the laptop booted from the CD everytime so there was no issues there.

@CommonSense - what I mean by did not work is that everytime the installation process would stop on the 'Installing windows' screen and go no further - the laptop boots from the OS disc and than I start the process of installation, the first time it comes on the installing windows screen it gets to the end of the steps and than the laptop restarts - than a screen comes up with the caption a

[Simply RED]

What's your OS? Where did you get the installer disc? Did you try formatting all partitions before installing? Did you alter anything in your BIOS other than the boot sequence so you can boot from the disc? How about resetting the BIOS to defaults before you begin reinstalling? Just make sure it boots from the disc first before going to the hard drive to look for an operating system.

[Common Sense]

What do you mean by did not work?
Blank screen? No sounds? Nothing? Did you make sure tha nothing was in the coomputer like memory cards, DVDs or USB hubs that could interfere with the boot? If you installment software is left in the drive then ot may try to reboot from there instead of the hard drive. Just take it out . You should not have to change the bios unless you did before the installation.
Was the OS a clean copy or an OEM version?

[Dell Inc.]

Hello Schwaan666,

I am from Dell Social Media and Community.

Do you mean that even after the system restore to factory settings, the system is still running slow?

If so, follow the link below to run a basic hardware test on your system.
http://support.dell.com/support/topics/g...cid=266787

If you get any error code, you can associate it to the list given in the link below.
http://support.dell.com/support/topics/g...&s=gen&cs=

If you are unable to complete the PC restore set up, follow the link below to restore your system to original factory settings:

http://support.dell.com/support/topics/g...egacy=true

If you are unable to perform Dell PC Restore, it could be because of the corruption of the file/partition during a previous install. However, you can follow the link below to manually install the operating system using the recovery discs.

http://support.dell.com/support/topics/g...egacy=true

If this has not helped you or if you need any further assistance, feel free to message me on Twitter. I will be happy to assist.

Dell-Niranjan
Twitter: @NiranjanatDell