http://tifreakware.net/images/Photo0336.jpg

This is what I'm greeted with after it does the normal boot up for windows screens, then gives "Windows is exiting in X seconds" and counts down until it shuts off. I've never seen this before, I was wondering if anyone had any ideas on this, or what I might look for?

My google-fu seems to not be bring up anything immediately relevant, but I shall continue my searching, of course, just though I might go on a 2 front attack for information

I have a Dell Inspiron at home (I don't know exactly which model). I know that, from factory, it came with that MediaDirect thing. It runs in a special Windows partition and could be accessed by pressing the button with a home (I think), instead of the power key. At some point the hard disk failed so we just formatted it and installed Windows 7. I think that MediaDirect thing is gone by now.

If you are getting the MediaDirect screen, ensure you're pressing the power on button... if it still doesn't work, try repairing the Windows bootloader with a rescue CD (or the Windows install disk).

Well, this isn't my computer, someone asked me to see if I could fix this issue. I know it isn't a hard drive failure, as then it wouldn't even do that. I think it's running Vista (hard to tell since it won't boot up)

I guess my next step is to replace the USB to hdd adapter I lost and see if there are any files on it to scavenge, then ask them if they want me to just install 7 on it..

I think Vista on that machine had MediaDirect "stapled" to it in strange ways. And the best solution will definitely be to get rid of Vista (and MediaDirect), no matter if the HDD failed or not

By the why, why do you think the HDD has not failed? Maybe that message is shown by some kind of pre-MBR loader (most specifically, one that checks for the MediaDirect key to have been pressed), which may very well be true since it says it can't access the disk, so logically it's probably not running from there?

PS: Consider getting a whole new hdd. Assuming that one is the same as the one we have on our Inspiron, it's really faulty. After the first major corruption on ours, it's has suffered from a couple more less-severe ones. It's not really like the whole hdd fails in the sense of not spinning up anymore, but 60% of the content gets corrupted.

It attempts to load windows, brings up the opening and exiting screens, so that leads me to believe the drive itself isn't dead, though that isn't to say that Windows hasn't been corrupted in some way, or it could be a virus that's done something, so I'll need to have a way to scan it to see if anything is left. Already got the item on order

While you wait, you could try booting a recovery or Live CD and see if the contents of the HDD are (partially) readable. That's how we recovered data from our Inspiron (now all important data on it is backed up daily).

I should look into setting up a live cd. I don't have the files, nor do I currently have any CD/DVDs to use to burn to :p

I would try a recovery yeah. Assuming there is a good recovery partition on there you could use that otherwise any Dell Windows disk with the same version of windows that it came with should work for the install.

The Inspiron doesn't have a recovery partition I think (it has two partitions, the second one is for MediaDirect). Its box comes with the Vista and drivers install disks (of course, in your case I don't think you can get these...).

I know the Inspiron boots from a USB stick (probably after some tweaking in the BIOS settings), so you could try using a Live USB instead.