everett said:
After initializing my laptop doesn't go any farther. It doesn't even
show the startup screen for xp. I just stare at a black screen. I've
tried f8, f2, f12 with no success. I just continue to get a
black screen. I'm at a loss. Any ideas out there?
Go into your BIOS and see if the drive is set to be bootable. While you're
there, make sure the CD is set to be booted from too.
Can you boot from the XP CD and at least see if the C drive is there? The
drive itself may have crashed on you.
If you can boot from the CD (and have BIOS set to boot from the CD drive of
course), then you would at least know the computer and screen elements are
working.
If those are working, then at least you can probably do a complete
reinstall of XP to get going again.
Are you giving it plenty of time at the "blank screen" to work itself
through? Try giving it at least 5 minutes, preferably closer to ten, and
see if hte boot completes or if it gets any further.
If not, something has gone very wrong and it's pretty hard to do much with a
laptop. Do you have a desktop you could test the drive in? Or a friend
with a desktop who would do it for you? The "trick" is to determine whether
the drive is bad, the screen is bad, or the motherboard is bad.
What is your level of expertise for delving into the inner workings? It
it's very low you're probably best off bringing it in to a shop to look at.
NOT one of the big box stores; a computer repair shop. An honest repair
shop.
Hope your backups are up to date! Assuming the drive has just gone south,
it may need to be replaced. Either way, a reinstall will wipe out all your
data.
HTH
Pop`
