windows 7 won't start

New desktop computer (5 days). 9/10 times I try to start it, it hangs on the initial page requesting Delete to enter BIOS setup or F12 to display boot menu (neither of which does anything either). Windows won't start. Contacted the company (ACER for emachines unit) and would have to mail in and be without for several weeks which I can't or don't want to do. Also, not thrilled about them being able to see private information on my drive (checkbook register, etc.). Would you have any suggestions for me to try before mailing it in for service?

I know it will be painful but if it were my computer I would return it. Backup your data then uninstall or delete any personal data before returning it. The alternative would be to restore to factory state and see if that makes a difference.How you do this varies with each manufacturer. There is usually a way to start the recovery from the Start menu and also by pressing a Fn key or key combination at boot time. Your users guide will tell you how. If you do this, backup your data first since the recovery will wipe everything out.

How do I backup the data? And what exactly would be saved? Does that save programs I've loaded/downloaded? Or would that have to be done again on the new computer?

Data is things like documents, pictures, music, videos, checkbook info, etc. The easiest way to back up your data is to an external flash drive or hard drive. Depends on how much you have. If it's not a lot you could burn it to CD (less than 750MB) or DVD (less than 4.5GB). Programs will have to be reinstalled. Let's back up a bit. Did the computer ever work correctly or has it been like this since day one?

I've only had the computer for 5 days. I don't think it ever worked properly, but I figured it was just Windows 7 nonsense. I was used to XP. It wouldn't close properly saying there were 48,000 (literally!) updates and then wouldn't complete them, so it would hang on the first update, etc. Often I would have to turn off and back on many times to load windows. But once it was on, I spent hours and hours installing all my programs. I have an external back-up drive, but that wouldn't even work when I tried to use it to back up the system using Windows back up or something like that. It never completed the task although it said 100% completed. It wouldn't stop and when I clicked cancel to end it hours later, it said it hadn't saved the data because it was aborted. I'm so frustrated as I just lost tons of data on my old computer which won't even turn on - it says "out of range" when I try to turn it on and won't boot up. I've lost important documents, checkbook register, photos, etc. from the old computer and now I'm having this trouble with the new one. I was hoping someone could hook the old hard drive up as a slave and get the data off the old one, but since I'm having trouble with this new computer I hesitate to even try that. I realize I'm probably going to just have to return/exchange the computer.

There is definitely something wrong with the computer. Windows 7 is the best behaved OS I've used to date. I suspect you have some kind of hardware problem and it's best to get it fixed as soon as you can. I know it will be painful not having one for awhile, time to read some of the books you've been putting off