Can anybody help me? My CD/DVD player on my Windows 7 PC stopped working - it wouldn't recognise that a disc was in the drive. I bought a USB portable CD drive and tried that, but it also didn't work.
When I looked at on Systems properties it said (for both drives) "Windows cannot start ... configuration incomplete or damaged (CODE 19).
I checked this on the Windows website and then did a scanfix - it reported that it couldn't repair the file.
The next suggestion was to reload Windows 7 - but I don't have the original discs (the PC was bought direct from Dell)
Help! What now?

Sounds like the registry is corrupt. Download the free Ccleaner

http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/download

Run it and click on the icon registry, then scan for issues, then fix selected issues, etc. Hopefully on the next reboot it should all be sorted.

You can download the Windows 7 files legally from here. Grab the version for the key you have. For what it's worth, a Home Premium key will activate both the x86 and the x64 versions, but not Professional or Ultimate.

As your DVD drive is out of action for burning the ISO, you'll have to use the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool from here.

Hiya, all you need to grab is a windows 7 oem disk. Try this with torrent. If you are still struggling then drop me a PM

http://pirateproxy.in/torrent/5385907/Windows_7_64-bit_Home_Premium_Dell_OEM

If you bought it direct from dell, there should be a recovery partition on pc, if there is you don't need a disk, just back up your files and run the recovery program.

http://www.dell.com/support/troubleshooting/us/en/19/KCS/KcsArticles/ArticleView?docid=DSN_362066

You should find the solution here.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314060/en-us

Thanks for all the responses. I tried the first few were too complicated for me but, as suggested, I went back to Dell and followed their instructions to reset to factory settings.
Thank goodness I had backed everything up on an external drive!!

The DVD player is now working again - all I have to do is retrieve all the programmes that disappeared - but it all seems to be working well.
Thank you.