bootup hangs on black screen?

Question

running xp home

Answer 1

POST is Power On Self Test - Basically where the system first detects the attached drives.

Your motherboard should automatically detect the Hard drives and CD/DVD roms attached to the system. If it hasn't detected a hard drive then it will indeed stop on a black screen.

The hang can also be caused by PCI devices which are causing a hardware conflict. I used to have an internal PCI modem which was a pain in this regard - 50% of the time the PC would boot - the rest it wouldn't. It stopped hanging as soon as the modem was removed.

Your best bet is to get into the bios when you first press the power button - Tap the DEL button very fast when you first get the black screen. Sometimes it can be F2 on modern motherboards but a general hint is to look for a line which says "Press DEL/F2 to enter setup". On some motherboards you have to be very quick too so get prepared for some frantic tapping as a simple key press doesn't always do the job.

Once you are in the bios look for the hard drives - You may need to look at the attached devices etc. If you see no HD in there then your HD is either dead or has loose wires.

To be honest though, this isn't a problem which can be easily diagnosed/fixed on the web.

If in doubt, take it to a PC repair shop. If your really hard up for cash I can try to help you but you will need 1 working PC and a webcam so that I can see the screen live. You will also need Yahoo or MSN messenger.

J

Answer 2

try to boot up into safe moe and do a roll back or sysste restore. you are going to need to provide more information though was there any beeps, what was you doing before this happend, any other history you can tell us

Answer 3

Try unpluging extra things like webcams/printers/memory card readers and then try it.

This happend to me once and all I had to do was unplug my webcam