| Forum Home | ||||
| Press F1 | ||||
| Thread ID: 79939 | 2007-06-06 07:45:00 | Safe Mode caused black screen and death | Mystix (12371) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 556646 | 2007-06-06 07:45:00 | I have a two year old Dell Dimension 8400 with Windows XP Home o.s. Yesterday, I restarted the machine in Safe Mode as Administrator to make a minor adjustment in the Registry. This caused the machine to stop functioning. The computer is running and I hear the hard-drive, but the screen is solid black. I tried to reboot from both the Dell recovery disk and an emergency disk I also have to no avail. Inserted the Windows XP disk. Nothing happened. I tried all the usual rebooting ways by restarting and pressing delete, F1, F2, F8, F10 and F12, rebooting each time. Nothing happened. The CD program is blocked from communicating with the rest of the machine. I cannot get into the machine to reset it to start in Normal Mode, which would probably end my problem. All I did was restarting it in Safe Mode from msconfig and then boot.ini (the standard way used by Microsoft) and the machine died. The machine is set to boot from CD first, hard-drive second. I had run the virus program (Norton) just before this happened and no virus was found. Could the Bios be corrupted? The screen is totally black. If the Dell and my own recovery CDs were unable to start the machine, can anything restart this computer? It has always been unstable. With instructions, I am capable of doing some repairs myself. Mystix |
Mystix (12371) | ||
| 556647 | 2007-06-06 08:19:00 | Wecome to PressF1, Mystix. If it has "always been unstable", Safe Mode didn't kill it. It died when you tried to boot in Safe Mode. That's coincidence, not causation. ;) What happens when you start the boot process? Do the keyboard LEDs flash in sequence? Do the disk drive select LEDs flash? If so, you are getting into the POST, so the CPU and (of course) the BIOS are OK, and suspicion would lie on the video system. It would be unusual for the BIOS to be corrupted. |
Graham L (2) | ||
| 556648 | 2007-06-06 08:28:00 | If it has always been unstable I would take it back and tell them if it is still under warranty... Do as Graham suggested and also check that all cables at the back are plugged in properly Why were you going into the registry? doing what? I assume you know what you are doing in the registry? ese you can cause the PC to not boot... |
The_End_Of_Reality (334) | ||
| 556649 | 2007-06-06 09:08:00 | it's a dell, that's your problem, heh heh :D I agree, if it's always been unstable you might as well just return it, no point removing any warranty.. if you don't have a warranty, then some details on the 'unstability' should be provided.... |
Agent_24 (57) | ||
| 556650 | 2007-06-06 16:15:00 | as for booting from cd........have you got it set in bios to use the cd drive as 'first boot device' cause if not it WONT boot from cd .... | drcspy (146) | ||
| 556651 | 2007-06-07 00:12:00 | To Graham L Yes, the keyboard and disk drives do light up and I can hear the disk turning and the computer is humming. All systems stay "lit" but no action occurs and the screen is black. Mystix |
Mystix (12371) | ||
| 556652 | 2007-06-07 00:19:00 | To The End of Reality The machine is not under warranty. The virus program did not work in User Account and I was only going to check in the Registry that Norton was "allowed". I know how to do that. Yes, all cables are plugged in. Thanks for your reply. |
Mystix (12371) | ||
| 556653 | 2007-06-07 00:32:00 | To Agent_24 The unstable conditions were many. Here are a few, but not all of them: the hard-drive crashed after one month and was replaced by Dell. The keyboard became corrupted and because of my password I was locked out for days. Luckily, I manage to get back in during reboot after a few days and was able to fix the keyboard. Error messages were plaguing me and after dealing with Dell India Tech Support to no avail, I changed the default settings myself and finally got rid of the error messages. The monitor died (Dell flat panel bought with the computer). Minor crashes and annoyances have come and gone. I never had a virus so these annoyances were most likely from a machine slapped together by careless workers. Mystix |
Mystix (12371) | ||
| 556654 | 2007-06-07 00:34:00 | To drcspy Yes, I did this important change myself. It will boot first from CD and second from the hard-drive. Mystix |
Mystix (12371) | ||
| 556655 | 2007-06-07 00:43:00 | Did u try selecting use the last known good configuration after u pressed F8? | Speedy Gonzales (78) | ||
| 1 2 3 | |||||