Dell laptop won’t boot up but turns on

Could I have mistakenly deleted the operating system in the hard drive? Would that also cause what is happening?

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No need to do any of this.

OP just reinstall Windows via USB drive and start from scratch

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No guarantee this will work, but in my opinion, it should be the first troubleshooting step. If your computer won't recognize it as a boot drive, then move on to more annoying steps.

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Soooo what version of windows do I down load and can I just go to some website and do this? Microsoft website?

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I don't know what your system specifications are, so let's stick with Windows 10. It's the second button to create installation media: LINK

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What exactly is a USB drive?

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Thumb drive, flash drive. One of these guys: LINK

Pro tip: Make sure whichever drive you use is blank. When you create the installation media, it will format (read: erase every fricking thing) the drive first.

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Sorry but Ia’ 64 and always had legal staff and IT gurus at the firm to do this while I handled legal cases. Humbling to realize I was a good lawyer but computer idiot.

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I'm finding it mildly ironic that I'm an attorney helping you with your IT issue, for free, on the internet

It's a dell...it prob has a restore partition

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It was loaded with some Microsoft office deal. Then I retired and didn’t want to pay the monthly license and got tired of my “team” asking to help me with things I no longer needed. So I finally hit delete. And probably screwed up. And that brings me here. Soooo what version of windows do I down load and can I just go to some website and do this? Microsoft website?

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Oy vey.

In case you face this in the future, the way to get rid of a program in Windows is to go to your Search feature, find Control Panel, from there go into your Add/Remove Programs, select it, then click the Uninstall button.

Considering your level of IT knowledge, I would recommend taking it to some computer expert unless you are looking to learn a new skill. You can take it to Geek Squad but the times I know of people using them for similar issues, they just reformat the drive and reinstall Windows (meaning any data you had gets erased). Ask around where you live to find someone/someplace reputable (maybe even contact someone from your old office's IT staff to see if they do freelance work or if they can recommend someone).

If you decide to do this on your own, then first you'll need to decide if there's any data (spreadsheets, Word docs, pictures, music, etc) you want to keep. If so then you'll need to pull the hard drive, connect it to an external enclosure which is connected to another computer, then copy the data you're wanting to save to either this other computer or a USB thumb drive. This is going to be more work intensive and I have to travel across the state today so if you want to go this route, let me know and I'll make another post detailing how to do this.

Otherwise...

If there's no data you want to keep, then first look on the back/bottom of the laptop for a tag listing which version of Windows that came with the laptop (because the license key will be present in BIOS, so if it's the same version you won't need to worry about registering it as it will auto-register the moment you connect to the internet). After that, follow the directions here to download the correct version of Windows (10 or 11, you'll choose which version of 10 or 11 as you go through the installation process).

After that's loaded on the USB drive, plug the drive into the laptop then boot it up. When the Dell logo comes up, start hitting the F12 button until you see a new message in the upper right of the screen talking about "one-time boot".

Hitting F12 will cause the boot menu to load. If you see the option to boot to your USB drive under both Legacy and UEFI sections, choose the one under UEFI. If there's only one option for booting from the USB drive, then pick that.

The Windows installation wizard is pretty straight forward. Make sure it's installing to the C: drive (which should be the one listed with the most space) and that's pretty much it. After it finishes installing (could be around an hour, depending on the laptop), walk through the setup and you're done.

Once you get done, be sure to open your browser then search for Dell Support Assist (or come here and click this link). Download Dell Support Assist then install it. This program checks with Dell to make sure your system has the latest drivers and BIOS updates. If it finds anything and installs it, it may want you to reboot after. Do that.

From there you should be good to go with reinstalling any specialty programs you want.

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Geek Squad reputable to take it to?

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I'll answer this one first - it depends on your local Geek Squad. Some have some very good technicians, but others are terrible beyond running their software repair tools.

That being said, they DO have some very strong tools if you have a potential virus.

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My Dell lap top turns on and goes through an automatic repair process but then the dial keeps spinning and can never get to the log in page

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You could TRY to reinstall Windows or reimage the drive. Or just install a new drive and install Windows on that; either way, not sure I recommend doing either unless those are things you're comfortable doing.

Not a hardware problem, just reinstall windows.