Windows won't load and the screen goes black

When I turned the computer on I saw the ME start up screen, but then the screen went black. I tried rebooting a few times, but I kept getting the same thing. I could boot into safe mode, but not normal mode. One time I just waited and the black screen went away and Windows loaded properly. I tried my backup 30GB drive and it worked. It had a few problems of it's own, so I reinstalled Windows ME on it and used the 120GB drive to hold data. I deleted all of the Windows and program files from the 120GB drive backed it up and thought I was good to go.

I'm not sure why the screen turns black, but it's done it on both the 30GB and the 120GB drive. When it happens I have to reboot into safe mode and run scandisk. Then when I reboot it works. I will also say that safe mode even shows the black screen for a few extra seconds before loading Windows. Thank you for any help.

 

sounds like it's taknig a long time to load a driver. I find that the NIC driver is often to blame. Try taking out your NIC (if you have one) and rebooting to test.

 

My NIC is on the motherboard, so I can't remove it.

However, I think I just remembered something. I'm almost positive that this problem started when I had my cable modem unplugged and I foolishly plugged it back in when the pc was booting up.

Edit: I had the power cable, ethernet cable and the co-axial cable unplugged, from the modem, and I plugged them back in while the PC was booting up.

 

This morning I turned the PC on and I got the screen that says that Windows didn't finish loading. I chose safe mode. I get this screen on almost all startups, since this problem started.

When safe mode was loading the Windows help center froze up. I hit the restart button, but got no beep and nothing but a black screen and the noise of the fans. I held the power button in to turn the PC off. After the power was off I waited a few seconds and turned the PC back on.

I just woke up so I'm not sure if I'm puttin all of this in the right order. I mean I'm not sure which boot up gave which error. I just wanted to type it in as soon as possible.

When the PC got power it took an extra long time to hear the beep and I heard one beep that sounded longer than usual. I saw the menu screen to choose safe or normal mode . I chose normal mode and and didn't let scandisk finish. Windows loaded normally. That's when I came to the forum.

I don't know if my PC battery has anything to do with any of the problems, but I keep readjusting my PC clock. I'm sure it's low. It's about 3 years old.

Does anybody have a suggestion?

 

I went into BIOS and disabled the onboard LAN. I hit F10 to save and exit. Windows loaded just fine. I rebooted two more times and each time Windows loaded correctly. I shut down the PC and waited about 30 seconds before I turned the PC back on. Windows loaded correctly along with all of my programs.

I'm pretty sure that the LAN was the problem and it was caused by connecting the cable modem during startup.

I went back into BIOS and enabled the onboard LAN. I hit F10 to save and exit. Windows loaded just fine. It seemed like everything was back to normal, so just to be sure I shut down the PC and waited about 30 seconds before I turned the PC back on. Windows loaded correctly along with all of my programs.

I don't know how long it will last, but it sure would be nice if that fixed the problem. I guess it would be like switching a circuit breaker off and on.

I also installed a new battery.

 

I'm sad to say that that didn't fix the problem. I'm wondering, if I disable the onboard LAN and install a new NIC will that fix the problem.

Sometimes, when I turn the PC on it stalls at the page that says searching for boot record. Then it loads windows. Other times it goes to the black screen. When that happens I reboot into safe mode and run scandisk and reboot into normal mode. That doesn't always work. In that case, I have to disable the onboard LAN, run safe mode, run scandisk, enable the onboard LAN, and then reboot into normal mode.

 

do this first. disable the NIC. now go into windows and un install the driver. Now reboot enable it and install the drivers. sounds liek drivers have been corrupted and windows chokes on them

 

Thanks for the suggestion, iamien. If this doesn't fix it I'll get a new NIC.

I disabled the onboard LAN, booted into safe mode, went to the device manager, removed the SIS 900 PCI Fast Ethernet Adapter and let the computer restart. I then rebooted, enabled the LAN, and let windows find the new hardware. It asked me for one file, which I had on the motherboard CD. I let Windows restart and then I got onto the Internet.

I hope that this works. Ever since the problem started, I have noticed that when the PC boots up and says that it's looking for the boot record in IDE-0 that it takes about 7 seconds. It used to take about 2 or 3 seconds. This is only if I don't get that black screen. I hope that I don't see that black screen again.

However, if that's the only problem that shows up, from this point, I will be happy.

Thanks for the help.

 

I just realized that when the screen goes blank, sometimes if I wait it will load Windows correctly. It wouldn't load normal mode, so I tried rebooting a few times. Then I booted to the Win ME boot floppy and ran scandisk. It was saying the size of the drive was being incorrectly reported. It fixed it. It also said that drive D: had lost clusters. It fixed those. Then I rebooted and it loaded just fine. I'm going to buy the NIC, just in case, because I'm going to be networking this PC and I want it to go smoothly.

 

I figured it out. I disabled the onboard LAN and was about to install a new NIC, but then I saw an NAV error, so I wondered what would happen if I re-installed NIS. I did and now everything works great!

I'm going to use the NIC for the other PC and network them when I get the router and cat 5, next week. Thanks for the help, everyone.