I had a serious computer crash Thursday afternoon, after getting a virus warning and then a freeze. I restarted and have ONLY BEEN ABLE TO RESTART IN SAFE MODE (or safe mode with networking); my computer will not start in normal mode at all and I have been unable to get any help anywhere else on this. I've run Norton (which took care of the virus problem; I regret that I failed to write down the initial culprit), anti adware and anti spyware programs, msconfig to tweak the startup settings, diagnostic on the hard drive (twice; it passed), and defragged the hard drive; none of these have fixed the problem. I have been unable to do a system restore as well - there are 'no valid restore points' on my computer for some unknown reason. This is turning into a crisis - I'm job hunting via email so it's critical that I get this resolved and fixed very quickly. Dell and Microsoft were of very little help, other than eating up several hours of valuable time on a work night. Please help - it would be very much appreciated.

David

It sounds like some important operating system files may have been damaged. If you have the Windows installation CD, you may want to back up your data and run the installation to fix the broken files.

What is the exact Dell model?

In safe mode or safe mode w/ command prompt try running a check disk:

start > run > cmd
in the new window type chkdsk/f
when prompted to run on boot choose Y & reboot
this will check for & fix any disk errors.