Black screen help

[daa967]

I apologize if this topic has been covered, I am new to this site and I am computer challenged!

I will get to the point now....

My stepsons computer went black on me! I will give you all the info I can at this piont. Its a Dell with windows xp. I clicked on ie to open web page and the page opened then immediately shut down (tried 3 times) I rebooted, here is where the problem got worse. It boots up normally, runs all the screens (and beeps) until it gets to the password login screen then it just stays black! Cant login, cant see the desktop or icons, cant see anything but black! The cursor stays active, you can move the cursor around the screen but nothing happens! I tried to reboot in safe mode and still nothing! I am at a loss because I cant see anything at all but the cursor.

Any and all help would be greatly appreciated!

I tried again and was able to get into the startup screen (F12) and I dont know what to do from there.

Upon leaving the startup screen, this is the message I got...

Primary drive 1 not found

Secondary drive 1 not found

F1 to continue

F2 to run setup

Any and all help would be greatly appreciated! My stepson is driving me crazy to get this fixed! Please help save his life by helping me

Happy Holidays

Dara

[laserjet]

I apologize if this topic has been covered, I am new to this site and I am computer challenged!

I will get to the point now....

My stepsons computer went black on me! I will give you all the info I can at this piont. Its a Dell with windows xp. I clicked on ie to open web page and the page opened then immediately shut down (tried 3 times) I rebooted, here is where the problem got worse. It boots up normally, runs all the screens (and beeps) until it gets to the password login screen then it just stays black! Cant login, cant see the desktop or icons, cant see anything but black! The cursor stays active, you can move the cursor around the screen but nothing happens! I tried to reboot in safe mode and still nothing! I am at a loss because I cant see anything at all but the cursor.

Any and all help would be greatly appreciated!

I tried again and was able to get into the startup screen (F12) and I dont know what to do from there.

Upon leaving the startup screen, this is the message I got...

Primary drive 1 not found

Secondary drive 1 not found

F1 to continue

F2 to run setup

Any and all help would be greatly appreciated! My stepson is driving me crazy to get this fixed! Please help save his life by helping me

Happy Holidays

Dara

Oops sorry for my error with this reply please read next reply thank you

[laserjet]

It may be the video Graphics card has either gone bad or if you recently used some drive cleaner utility, or registry cleaner utility it may have wiped the drivers from the system. I would first do this if you have the software for that card thats in the PC try to reinstall if not call dell . if the computer is older, then the card may have gone bad it does happen.

[DaChew]

I just wasted several hours on a 3 year old Dell that was giving me a "unmountable boot volume" error, running XP as a repair disk couldn't work as the system partition was lost

Then I moved the drive into another working computer, but it keep going to checkdisk on bootup and finding more errors on the hard drive

F2(bios) saw the drive fine

It would boot up so far, even giving me the safe mode boot options, but would blue screen

If bios is not seeing your drive, it sounds like it's dead or a cable may be loose

[daa967]

I just wasted several hours on a 3 year old Dell that was giving me a "unmountable boot volume" error, running XP as a repair disk couldn't work as the system partition was lost

Then I moved the drive into another working computer, but it keep going to checkdisk on bootup and finding more errors on the hard drive

F2(bios) saw the drive fine

It would boot up so far, even giving me the safe mode boot options, but would blue screen

If bios is not seeing your drive, it sounds like it's dead or a cable may be loose

Hi again! I would love to say that I did some High-Tech tweaks...but I didnt do anything to the comp! In fact, I was on it a bit earlier and no problems at all! I am at such a loss! I can get into safe mode, but all I see is safe mode in the corners! No other data! If anyone can help me from this point I would so appreciate it!

Thanks again

Dara

[raistlinmagic]

Hi again! I would love to say that I did some High-Tech tweaks...but I didnt do anything to the comp! In fact, I was on it a bit earlier and no problems at all! I am at such a loss! I can get into safe mode, but all I see is safe mode in the corners! No other data! If anyone can help me from this point I would so appreciate it!

Thanks again

Dara

I am not sure if this is the same problem or not but here is something that may help.

I have seen this many times. it turns out that it is a virus. I believe it is pakes virus. The only fix i could find was to remove the hard drive and scan the drive with another machine. The only software I have ever used to do this was kaspersky antivirus. You can download Kasperky trial software and scan with it. Once this scan was done I was able to put the hard drive back in the machine and get into windows and run Malwarebytes and other tools to completely clean the system.