[whatnext]

so this computer sucks ....its a laptop...no brand name...with a toshiba harddrive....anyway....it is now at the point where you turn it on....to a lovely black screen...(at least its not a blue one)...and it wont even boot from the windows cd...it says press any key to boot from cd...i do...then it says checking your systems hardware configurations...and then thats it....does nothing...stays at a black screen forever...even left it going overnight and nothing. NOw i have been to the BIOS and changed it to boot from cd...done every possible boot method...even burned other utilities programs and hard drive recovery programs into a bootable cd (which by the way is a pain in the [bleep] to do...and i wasted about 7 blank cds doing so) to use on that computer and it wont boot...

i obviously cannot get into safe mode...or command promt....the only screen i get when i turn it on is the insysde.com software page with the intel icon and then it says press f2 or esc to get to BIOS...thats as far as this computer will let me go...before going black...i can hear it working...but nothing

now there use to be a flashing cursor and now it only flashes 2x then disapears

does anyone have any ideas on how i can get past this black screen of death...i have tried everything...

all help is good help!!!

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Does it have a floppy drive, and can you boot to dos? Does the screen show a DOS prompt?

(use a boot floppy---www.bootdisk.com)

[gerryf]

Does it have a floppy drive, and can you boot to dos? Does the screen show a DOS prompt?

(use a boot floppy---www.bootdisk.com)

[whatnext]

there is no floppy....and i dont get any dos prompt on the screen....i can press esc and get to the bios but thats it....

i have looked at bootdisk before but they only have floppy boot discs and thats not helping...since it wont even boot from a bootable cd anyway

arrrrr

[gerryf]

if the flashing cursor disappears, is it possible the lcd backlight is burned out? Try connecting to an external monitor...you may need to tap the FN+f7 key to switch to external monitor

The sympton you describe could be a bad cmos battery...with the power on, and in bios, redetect the harddrive and cd-rom, then reboot, but without turning the machine off (or the settings will disappear again).

Then try booting.

This may not be possible to trouble shoot over the web

[whatnext]

the monitor cant be burnt out...because i get the insyde.com screen...colours and all as i mentioned...

how would i go about doing what you mentioned...redetecting the harddrive?

[gerryf]

when you try to boot to a cd, what CD? Is it a bootable one?

How about a floppy?


I have no idea what

insysde.com screen

is

Any chance you have a digital camera and can grab a couple pictures?

[whatnext]

yes...i have made several bootable cds and nothing...a recovery disc and windows xp..they work as a bootable disc on other computers but not the one thats not working...and the insyde.com screen is just the name of the software company that made the computer...it shows everytime you start up the computer and always has...it has their logo and says in the bottom...press esc or f2 for bios....

[whatnext]

i think its screwed

[GoofyGoat1103]

i'm having a smiliar problem. I had a machine running windows me, and wanted to nuke it and load windows xp pro. I changed the bios settings so that it would boot from the cd, and everytime it tried it said boot record not found. I checked on another machine to make sure that the cd was bootable, and it was. i downloaded the boot disk program (6 floppies) and i'm going to try and get to the cd from there tonight.

any other suggestions?