Back screen after BIOS

Hello all.....looked this up in the search, but nothing really addressed what I am experiencing.
When I push the power the machine will go through the POST and I can see the Splash screen "DELL". at that point the monitor goes dark. It will not load the OS.....at least I can't see if it does or not.
I have tried doing a LKG Config..no dice...tried to go into safe mode...no dice.....still black screen.
I can get to the bios, but it is locked by a password so I can't make any changes....and of course the user doesn't know it.
I hooked up a different moniter...same thing.
Wondering if I could try another video card, but I don't have a PCI Video card here at work....checked all the old models....all AGP.
I don't want to buy a video card if that's not it and then have to eat the cost.
Any ideas? I plan on running the BART cd on it tonight and seeing if that works, but not holding my breath.
The guys son was on it the night before it stopped working.....so I'm thinking he changed something......

thanks

Mike

 

What are we working on, a desktop or laptop? If it's a desktop, is it an LCD flat panel or crt monitor?

Have you tried booting a live CD such as Knoppix? That would give you a direction at least. If it doesn't boot from the CD, try taping F12 to get a boot options menu.

Does the HDD lite on the front of the computer light at all after the screen goes black?

If this is a Desktop, you can clear the bios by removing the battery for a few minutes.

 

It is a Dell Dimension Desktop ..8400 I think.....with a CRT monitor.
What's wierd is that safe mode won't boot even in VGA. I have UBCD4Win that I'm going to try to use tonight.....F12 gets me to the boot menu, but even the diagnostics on the HD came back OK.
I'll keep an eye on the light tonight when I go over there......I may have to clear the Bios to be able to change the boot sequence.....it's set for the deskette at the moment......I'll keep you guys in the loop.....thanks for the reply!!!!

Mike

 

So your able to get to the F8 boot menu for safe mode??

That says it's not the Video Card or the monitor. It would likely be something with the HDD failing to go past a certain point. Factory HD Diagnostics usually only looks for bad sectors not corrupt data. If you have an XP install CD, you could boot that to the repair console and run chkdsk /r . That will check for bad sectors and data corruption.

 

I've found that many things can cause this. If you strip the motherboard down to the cpu and a known good stick of ram, you should at least get a message saying that it can't find ntloader or a boot device. But if you still get a blank screen, the MB may be bad. Also try another PSU. It just might not be getting enough juice to power up properly anymore. Reseat the RAM as well.

 

It sound to me like you have video all the time except when you try to boot the HD. If that the case, I would try booting a live CD first to see it that is the case.

 

Ok....this is what I got last night.
Went over to try to run the recovery console and finally got to it,....the keyboard kept cutting out, but I was able to get to the RC. He didn't have the admin password so I had to quit that and go in with the UBCD4Win and change the admin password....went back in to the RC and ran chkdsk /r and it found a few problems and said it fixed them. Restarted and the same problem occurs. I can see the splash screen, go into the settings, see the F8 options....all of that, but when it goes to boot the OS...black screen.
I did notice the HD light stayed on and green for the entire time and then just went off and there was no activity after that....no matter if I pressed keys or not. Only thing that works from that point is ctrl+alt+del.......then it reboots.
I pulled the drive and brought it to work today to see if I can pull files off of it to save some data. I'll just hook it up as a slave drive in another system and see if that works.
Also tried to run the UBCD4Win and was unable to do that....that never happens....even if I know the drive is bad. Gets to the opening Windows XP screen and reboots. weird...

Seems like it's a boot problem with the OS....whether it's the boot.ini not seeing the drive or the MBR is corrupt.....not sure.

Thanks again for the replies.....

Mike

 

Well I had to end up replacing the drive and reinstalling the OS. They were happy about that. I have yet to be able to access the file structure on the other drive though. I have tried using the UBCD4Win and also tried to attach it to my computer via USB enclosure....still nothing. I need to see if there is any other option (aside from sending it off to be recovered) to get files off this thing.
I told them I was unable to get files off of the drive at this time and got the look.....
I also told them months ago to back up their files....buy an external drive and run the backup program...easy breezy....now they are having a hard time realizing the fact their pictures and his business files may be lost. I guess they just realized this.....

Anyway....any ideas on what to use to try to recover info if the drive isn't noticed by the OS?

Thanks again guys for the help...

Mike

 

You could give MiniTools Power Data Recovery a try. Many people have had success. It takes a few hours if I understand correctly, so you may want to try it by way of having the damaged HD connected by USB on your PC first. Make sure if it sees the files that you copy them to a different HD not the original (you don't want to overwrite any data).

 

thanks sach2......I'll give that a shot.