[Karen Sheridan]

I have a Gateway desktop that worked fine last night; shut down normally. This am I turn on to power up; beeps once like it should; fan is running but black screen. It's not the monitor, monitor is powered on and
fine. Please help!!!!! Need computer bad!

Computer is Gateway FX4710-UB003A
Runs Windows Vista Home Premium 64 Bit
Graphics card is HD4650 ATI Radeon Purchased in May 2010 and
installed at Best Buy.

I cleaned out everything; disconnected & re-connected graphics card; fan on graphics card is also working.

Computer powers up, beeps once, Gateway screen appears then screen goes black?

I also can't seem to boot it up in safe mode

Thank you!

Edited by Karen Sheridan, 09 September 2011 - 09:01 AM.

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[phillpower2]

Hi Karen Sheridan
I notice in your other thread that you were able to boot into safe mode so I
suggest that you try the following;

1. Reboot and enter Bios. Make sure the following is set up correctly. If
you have never changed advanced Bios settings, please call your geeky cousin
who has and have him explain as he does the next steps.

2. Make sure that APIC is enabled and ver2.0 is supported. In simple terms,
this is the software that assigns priority to all devices attached to your
motherboard. Please see Wikipedia for the heavy description. Ver2.0 is
required for Vista to make sure that all your devices will be found during
setup and running the OS. For those with some previous experience, APIC takes
care of assigning IRQ and DMA addressing to all system devices to make sure
that every device can communicate with the system in order of priority. If
you have a computer or motherboard made after 2005, this is almost assured to
be an option. You can get Vista working under Ver1.0, but we are leaving that
to those with previous experience and simply saying that this is not a MS
supported option.

3.Make sure that ACPI is enabled. This is different than above. ACPI is
what makes the computer go to "sleep" or "hibernate". It is universal in
computers after 2000. Make sure you have at least ACPI S1 enabled. S3 is
only possible in very custom system without headaches.

4. Make sure that MPS table 1.1 or 1.4 is selected. I recommend 1.1 from
personal experience. This only applies to those with dual-core systems.
Please consult your computer/MB documentation.

5.Make sure that oavailableideo is disabled if availible. Please also
disable quick/fast boot for your own sanity.

6. Now save and reboot. (Typically F10)

7. On reboot, after the machine has counted the system memory and found the
hard drive, hit F8 to enter the windows boot menu. Windowschine has not yet
loaded up winodws from the hard drive, and is essentially no different than a
machine with a blank hard drive. You want to choose safe mode with networking.

8. You will now see the system loading, line by line. Have a cup of coffee
on slower systems.

9. You will end up in Safe mode, but will now be getting a message of not
being able to continue as setup was not completed. Please hit Shift-F10. This
will leave you staring at the command prompt. You do *remember* DOS, right?

10. Type "devmgmt.msc" and the Device manager from the windows control
panel will show up. Look at the video card. Chances are it will not have an
exclamation point like some devices. Feel free to load up drivers for
anything needed from here if you know how to.

11. Right click on the video card entry and choose "Update Driver..." A
wizard will start to guide you through the process.

12. You will see "Can Windows connect to Windows Update to search for
software?" Click "No, not this time"

13.Click Next, then click "Choose from a list", now click next.

14. Select the generic VGA Driver and click next. Windows will now install
the standard VGA driver. Click OK to close the wizard and then closeWindowsevice manager. Now click ok to that old warning about winodws not finished
installing. The system will reboot.

15. The system will now boot up without hanging or faulting on your
video cards driver. The machine may want to reboot one more time after
setting up your settings. If it does, you may have to repeat the process
above one more time.

16. After completing set-up, you should now be looking at the desktop and
thinking "Thank god". Now feel free to install the video drivers of your
choice. Please make a restore point first though.

Post back with the results.

[ZanyMom]

Thanks for all the info but first I have no such geeky cousin I can call . . .

Second; I booted up the computer hitting F2 for Bios and do not see anywhere
that it says APIC or ACPI or MPS Table?? I looked under every tab.
Please let me know where to find this info to check it.

Thank you!

And about the two accounts; one I had from a long time ago; went to log in and then
it did this log in thru facebook thing. Messed up!

[Karen Sheridan]

Thanks for all the info but first I have no such geeky cousin I can call . . .

Second; I booted up the computer hitting F2 for Bios and do not see anywhere
that it says APIC or ACPI or MPS Table?? I looked under every tab.
Please let me know where to find this info to check it.

Also ran memory test on computer; all came out fine and then computer even booted up ok;
then did restart and goes back to same blank screen again

Thank you!

And about the two accounts; one I had from a long time ago; went to log in and then
it did this log in thru facebook thing. Messed up! Sorry posted previous from old account.

0 + Like

Edited by Karen Sheridan, 12 September 2011 - 09:03 AM.

[phillpower2]

Hi, sorry for the delay in replying and thank you for adding me to your friends list

Thanks for all the info but first I have no such geeky cousin I can call

Sorry the text was copy/pasted from a tutorial (must remember to edit it).
Without knowing how your particular BIOS system is set out I cannot direct you to the ACPI function however with your additional information I don`t believe that this is the appropriate approach to resolve the issue in any event.
Can I ask how did you test the memory, and how many sticks of Ram do you have?
If you are able to boot into safe mode with networking I suggest that you download the latest drivers for your video card and save them in a new folder on your desktop then uninstall the video cards present drivers and shut down the PC, disconnect the power cord from the wall, open the case and remove the CR2032 battery on the MB for a few moments and then replace it, this will restore your MB back to the default factory settings so upon first boot you will need to go into the BIOS and reset the time and date, save and exit (F10) and then Y to confirm that you accept the new settings, Windows will use its generic video card drivers which will then allow you to install the drivers that you saved earlier, your drivers available @ http://www.amd.com/u...es/hd-4600.aspx
Hopefully this will resolve the issue but if not provide us with the requested Ram details along with confirmation that you have Vista Sp2 installed.

.jpeg courtesy of RonShaffer61