Skiman
Super Freak
Talked to Dell customer service rep today. Said I'd need a windows disk that came with my laptop. I told him I never got one and he basically called me a liar. Then said without the warranty I could not get a new one from them. Warranty expired february. Warranty renewal is $340 something. Then he said I could buy a copy of windows 7 and try reinstalling it myself but it could be a hard drive error. In which case I'd have to buy a new hard drive and install it. Conveniently their warranty covers the replacement disc and a new HD if I needed one.
So looks like my only option is to renew the warranty. All solutions I've found online have failed.
Sorry to hear about your dilemma, looks like the guys here have all suggested mostly everything that you could do, unless you knew someone that has a Win7 disk then it might allow you to boot into that recovery disk partition option and run the setup from the command prompt via DOS with the "RESTORE" feature. That's what Dell did anyway with the recovery partition with most of their PC's or factory setups.
Do you know what type of Win7 you had, you might get buy cheaper by buying the operating system from Best Buy or whatever eletronic store is near you. I know Best Buy sells there Ulimate Windows 7 edition for $319.00, at least that is cheaper than the $350 Dell is wanting to renew your warranty for and will more probably not get a disk with that warranty either, they might just tell you to send it in and they'll restore it to factory default settings and send it back to you without a disk. If you bought the operating system from a store at least you have a disk that you could always fall back on if this were to happen again. Also if you ever do get this up, create a restore point on the accessories menu option as the very first thing you do whenever operating the PC. That way there's a "last know good configuration" restore point on the system that Windows is in control with instead of relying on the DELL manufacturer software that's on the partition.
Windows 7 Home Premium
Windows 7 Professional
Windows 7 Ultimate