Insanity sets in........

J

jeffncris

New Member
My computer developed a rather peculiar problem recently: when booting, the screen remains black with the cursor blinking merrily away in the upper left corner. After numerous attempts to reboot and no success, I take it the shop. They can't figure it out either, and re-format the hard drive with all the nonsense that entails. Worked fine for about three days, then much to my delight happened again. Off to the shop again. They called later saying it was working perfectly, it booted just fine for them numerous times. They advise if it happens again, unplug the power cord, then plug it in again. This morning it happens AGAIN. I follow their advice with the power cord, and Presto! it works fine. My question is: What the h"#$ is causing this? Have any of you ever seen this before?? I'm gonna shoot this damn thing....

Thanks in advance,

jnc
 
Sounds like either mobo or BIOS playing about or the hard drive is on the blink, dont think its PSU related cos it turns on fine and sits there doing nothing, but its stilled powered up, so probably not power related.

Can we have some specs of this posessed PC please??


dragon2309
 
2.8 ghz, 512 mb ram, dual 80 gig HDD's, Win xp home edition, LG dual layer DVD rewriter....... just standard stuff really, the computer has been working fine for over a year and I haven't installed anything recently so this has got me puzzled..... I was thinking HDD problems?
 
The hard drive is a definite possiblity - you'll get the cursor when there is nothing to boot from (or if you don't have the boot order set to include the HDD). I'm just confused on why removing the power cord would correct this.
 
The hard drive is a definite possiblity - you'll get the cursor when there is nothing to boot from (or if you don't have the boot order set to include the HDD). I'm just confused on why removing the power cord would correct this.
Click to expand...

Thats why i said dodgy BIOS, perhaps its corrupt, not recognising the Hard Drive or perhaps its just not communicating in the right way, to start of i would replace the motherboard, see if it works, then the hard drive and then the PSU. Is this a custom build or shop bought, if so, what shop?
 
either way, if the shop says its fine they're not telling the truth.
the only way you should be able to turn a computer on is simply by pushing the power button, not unplugging it and plugging it back in and then turning it on.
 
Since I fear impending doom, I was thinking of cloning my existing HDD to the other HDD I have installed, but I'm not sure of how to do this. Is there an easy way? Do I need to format the second HDD first? Is there a freeware program to handle this, or is this a bad idea?
 
its my usual problem in my customer due to their power cord is allways getting stuck with some thing heres the tip allways be sure that nothing can stand on the way of your power cord because of the plug might notbe connected properly on the terminals of your power suply if the problem persist even if you even replaced a power cord, buy a new power suply :D
 
i think its very possible that it is a registry issue. The same thing happened to the computer I am using now. Make a boot disk (find the stuff at http://www.bootdisk.com, throw the things on a disk. Put the disk in the computer, and restart. Sooner or later, you will get to a prompt and type in "regscan /restore" and remember the space. You will get a list of early registry backups. Choose one from around the time the computer worked, and restart. It should now work:D .






It's still possible that you are having a hard drive issue,
but this should help. It seems to me that the OS is booting, and
freezing at startup, which seems to be caused from a bad registry.
Don't exclude the fact that it *might* be power supply issue.
I have been experiencing that with Live Linux CDs on a laptop
where it just shuts down and leaves the screen powered on.


One last thing: If you have windows XP, at normal startup,
press F8 and open the advanced startup screen. You should
see an option for "Start with the last known good settings"
and you can select that. Hope you don't go insane.....
 
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