Windows won't start

[oneillblue]

Right guys nothing has worked so far, keep getting this black screen.

Unplugged battery and plugged it back in. Just got battery low and set the bios up again to defaults only to get a black screen.

Windows is not loading up while the black screen is there because when it is my keyboard does not respond at all.

Grateful for the help so far though guys.

 

[KSoD]

Unplug all your USB connections. Then try to boot.

 

[eyeCpc]

When first going with the drivers on the software disk and then downloading the drivers from the support site I ran into black screens right after the first spash screen was seen due to drivers then. That was the thought when first seeing this on XP and then Vista as well ruling out a software problem but a monitor not quite making the trip any longer.

Simply unplugging usb devices won't eleviate the black screens since all you would see as a result of a failed device there would be Windows simply locking up or simply slowing down things down while loading. A flaky video wouldn't even allow the post screens to be seen.

With software and internal hardwares ruled out trying a different monitor and seeing things suddenly going normal would reveal the actual problem or rule the monitor out one way or the other. That would be one thing to try there.

 

[oneillblue]

Tried using a different monitor mate, black screen.

Windows doesn't even show up onscreen. Straight after the _ flashing it just goes black.

Well I've just switched my Hard Drive over to another computer and still got the same, so the problems on that somewhere.

 

[oneillblue]

Probably have to buy a new Hard Drive.

 

[eyeCpc]

The idea there was to rule out the monitor seeing the problem of being kicked into the standby mode. The drive not being seen as a boot device failure message onscreen seems to point to that still being good.

The flashing cursor in the upper left hand corner points to the lack of any boot information as if the drive was wiped clean or simply new without any boot information just a bare partition or unpartitioned.

To test that simply take a drive with or without an NTFS partition on it and set it as the default boot device. You will see the same flashing _cursor in the upper left hand corner of the screen pointing to lack of boot information or the drive there may have seen a boot sector virus?

With a simple loss or corruption of boot information sounds like the problem being seen there. "The_flashing" changes the dynamics on troubleshooting with that information provided. You may end either seeing the fixboot and fixmbr commands work or fail at the recovery console then needing a repair install.

 

[oneillblue]

With all due respect mate all of that means nothing to me. Unfortunately I don't know too much about computers.

I assumed the flashing underscore was normal and then it went onto Windows booting up.

To test that simply take a drive with or without an NTFS partition on it and set it as the default boot device. You will see the same flashing _cursor in the upper left hand corner of the screen pointing to lack of boot information or the drive there may have seen a boot sector virus?

With a simple loss or corruption of boot information sounds like the problem being seen there. "The_flashing" changes the dynamics on troubleshooting with that information provided. You may end either seeing the fixboot and fixmbr commands work or fail at the recovery console then needing a repair install.

Explain this like you would explain it to a simpleton please.

 

[oneillblue]

Can I not use two Hard Drives and boot off the working Hard Drive and then somehow fix the other one.

 

[eyeCpc]

One way to find out if a drive is bad is to simply run it by itself and even boot with a floppy with the drive manufacturer's diagnostic tool to run tests that way. If the tests reveal too many problems you will want to dump it as soon as you retrieve anything you want from it.

The flashing underscore is seen when the bios detects a working drive while not finding any boot information in order to see the operating system loaded. If you have an ide drive and what Windows running on a Serial ATA(sata) drive then you first unplug the ide model in order to install Windows on that. Otherwise the ide controller will override the sata by default.

Once you have Windows on the preferred drive you simply plug in the second drive and have the option to copy files from it or leave it intact if Windows was never installed on it. The Disk Management or another partitioning tool can be used to wipe it if needed and create one or more partitions for storing files there.