Hi,
Having needed to change over from using mainly Apple computers to using PC, I don't know too much about computers. I bought a new Dell XPS 8700 roughly 3 days ago. Upon opening the package and setting it up however, I noticed that the CPU fan had not being screwed on and was moving inside the case, so I screwed it back on. Upon turning on the computer for the first time there have been a few problems.
tl;dr- New computer is in an endless loop of loading, errors, automatic repair and choosing the keyboard layout. Diagnostic Tests say that the computer is fine, Legacy and custom recovery disks do not work and I am stumped.
Computer- Dell XPS 8700
Processor- Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4790 CPU @ 3.60Ghz
When turning on the computer, it starts to load, but then a blue screen saying, "Your PC has run into a problem" appears and then almost immediately goes black. After going black, the computer once again loads however this time "Preparing Automatic Repair" is displayed on the bottom of the screen. Upon finishing loading it asks for the keyboard layout, and then gives 2 options;
Troubleshoot and
Turn off your PC.
Upon clicking troubleshoot I am given 4 more options;
Refresh your PC,
Reset your PC,
Dell Backup and Recovery and
Advanced Options.
When I click on Refresh your PC it states "The drive where Windows is installed is locked. Unlock the drive and try again." When I click Reset Your PC it states "Unable to reset your PC. A required drive partition is missing." Once I click Dell Backup and Recovery it states "The recovery environment is incomplete or corrupted," and then tells me to recover the device from another bootable recovery media (which I do not have). Upon clicking Advanced Options I am once again given 5 more options;
System Restore,
System Image Recovery,
Startup Repair,
Command Prompt and
UEFI Firmware Settings.
System Restore states that I must specify the Windows installation to restore. System Image Recovery states that "An internal error occurred" and then states that the system could not find the file specified (0x80070002). Startup Repair will try to diagnose the problem and then states that "Startup Repair couldn't repair your PC . Command Prompt opens up the command prompt. UEFI Firmware Settings tells me to restart to edit the UEFI Firmware Settings.
After contacting Dell support, and spending multiple hours worth of running diagnostic tests on the system, it stated that there was nothing wrong with the computer.
After reading up a bit on fixing the problem, I held down <f12> while booting up. Upon trying a Legacy boot, it states "Reboot and Select proper Boot Device or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot Device and press a key." Upon trying to create a recovery disk on a USB and trying to make it boot from the USB, it would spend some time loading and then repeated the same line as mentioned above.
Upon holding down <f2>, and accessing the Aptio Setup Utility, boot mode was set as UEFI and upon trying Legacy it gave the same message in the paragraph above. Upon trying to edit any other settings, it either did nothing or just gave the same message.
Upon trying to enter safe mode by holding down <f8> it would still just load normally and continue in the same endless loop. Upon holding down <shift> as well while holding it down, the blue loading bar would freeze and would only continue loading when <shift> was released and then also continued in the same loop.
As a fairly new PC user with little to no experience and going online to look for solutions for the past 3 or so days, I am stumped.
All help would be appreciated, and thank you for your time!