Black Screen Before BIOS

Hi,
I had left my PC on last night, I go on it this morning, move the mouse and it just goes into a black screen, so I'm like wtf then I reboot.. now.. since then whenenver I turn my machine on and it shows the first screen with inititializing, memory check etc then just goes black screen. This is milliseconds before there is an option to press F2 to enter bios. So pressing the key to go into bios doesn't get me there. Not sure what could've caused it as it's been working fine xp/linux dual boot for long time. Anyone know how I could go about trying to fix it?

 

Have you tried to boot to a CD like Linux or is it not getting that far?

Unplug any USB devices you have attached. Do you get same result?

 

It's not getting as far as to boot from CD,
I had a usb mouse plugged in only.. unplugged it but still same prob

 

I can only give basic advice on HW.

You could try unplugging the HD and CDROM to see if you get to the F2 screen. So basically keyboard, mouse monitor attached and see if either of those is holding up POST.

Maybe reset CMOS and see if that helps. Unplug the computer and remove the coin shaped CMOS battery for a minute. Put it back in, plug in and see if it takes you to BIOS to set Time and Date.

 

Thanks for the help, I'll try that