reboot to black screen w/cursor?

I woke up this morning to a computer that only gives me a black screen with a blinking cursor in the upper left corner.. it does this every time i reboot..

am i screwed?

its an older computer, still running Windows XP..

is anyone here familiar with a black screen w/blinking cursor?

any help is appreciated!

 

Try using some of the F8 boot options like Safe Mode and/or Last Known Good Configuration. You can also boot into the Recovery Console with your XP install disc and run the disk checker to (hopefully) repair any file system problems. The following info was taken from the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Once you're in the Recovery Console (it looks like the old-school DOS environment), type chkdsk C: /r and press Enter to run the disk checker with the full repair and recovery option. This will take some time, so be patient. You may notice the percentage indicator actually go backward (like from 72% to 58%), this is normal so don't worry. You may also think the process has locked up as it may sit at a percentage number for an unusual amount of time... again, don't worry, this is normal. When the disk checker is done, type exit and press Enter to reboot (remove the XP disc) and hopefully it will boot to your desktop. Good luck!!!

[dlb]

(NOTE: in the chkdsk command above, there is a space before and after the C: and the command will NOT work if those spaces aren't included)

 

Another thing you may try is to tell your computer not to boot of your Cdrom or floppy disk drives. I did that one time to fix my father's computer. What was happening was the CDROM drive was malfunctioning, causing the computer to hang when it checked it for a boot device.

To change boot device order, just go to BIOS setup and look under boot devices.

 

unfortunately, the F8 boot option doesn't seem to do anything, and F10 brings up a blue box with 2 options, but both of them take me right back to the black screen w/blinking cursor.

I can however, use F2 and get to my BIOS screen, but I don't know what to do when I'm in there.

Also, I have a "Restore" disc, but I can't find my XP Install disc.

 

If you have a floppy drive make sure there is no disk in it.

 

when you press F2 to get to BIOS setup, you need to change the boot order so your HDD is the first to boot from.

It is difficult for me to give you exact steps since almost every bios is deferent. Just poke around BIOS setup until you see something labeled boot sequence or something close. When you can bring up a list of different devices to boot from and their order, just use the instructions to the side or bottom to change the order. You want your hard drive to be first. See if it boots after that.