tell her to get the free malwarebytes and update it then run a scan. here are the directions. download Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware to your desktop. * Double-click mbam-setup.exe and follow the prompts to install the program. * At the end, be sure a checkmark is placed next to Update Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware and Launch Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware, then click Finish. * If an update is found, it will download and install the latest version. * Once the program has loaded, select Perform full scan, then click Scan. * When the scan is complete, click OK, then Show Results to view the results. * Be sure that everything is checked, and click Remove Selected. * When completed, a log will open in Notepad. Please save it to a convenient location. The log can also be found here: C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Application Data\Malwarebytes\Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware\Logs\log-date.txt Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware she should go through the pc and get rid of any old programs she no longer uses by using add remove programs then clean out the recycle bin.

Do you know the name of the file that is missing? Are you sure that is the only one? Did you get more than one recovery CD when you bought the computer? Perhaps there is a second CD with those needed files and you are trying the wrong CD. During start up with the CD in the drawer does the CD player activity light appear for quite a while suggesting the CD is being read? You might consider putting the CD in the computer you are using, stop the auto start as it occurs, then use Windows Explorer to verify you have the right CD. When you entered the BIOS you tried to change the sequence to CD then hard drive then floppy. Did you hit F10 to save and exit? If not then were you prompted to save the changes and did you follow along? Seems like you may have exited without saving the changes.

Do Ctrl-Alt-Del to bring up your Task Manager, click on the Processes tab, and click once or twice on the CPU tab at the top of the listings: this will show what process is chewing up the most resources (which will probably be the culprit). Also, look at the CPU Usage line at the bottom of Task Manager and see what the % Usage is. Then report back here on what you found out.

"F2 for setup and F12 for boot options." Are you saying you get this far and the computer REBOOTS by itself, if that is the case you start to consider a power issue here. How many files did the user want to save? Where are the 2 recovery disks that should have came with the pc, or does it have a recovery partition that you would have an option for after hitting F12 if you get that far. If you slave the drive run your options scan disk, check disk ect, the go to the manfactures site of the hard drive an run there tests on the drive. I wonder if you can get recovery disks from Dell for the 2400 series?