black screen

I was doing a system restore on my ACER 3003WLCi laptop, and when the screen came up stating it was done I clicked OK to reboot.
When I did this the Windows XP screen came up (even the dotted line showing it was loading was moving) then the screen went black.
I have rebooted into BIOS and reset to boot from CD and inserted my ACER provided System CD in and rebooted again. Still got the black screen after the Windows XP page.
I am at wits end, can anyone PLEASE help me!!!!

 

Bad driver most likely. Can you boot into Safe mode?

 

can't boot into anything!

 

what I think happened is = when it was doing the system restore it had a hic-cup and didn't actually finish what it was doing for some reason or another, sooo it just leaves me hanging here with a useless laptop until I can figure out how to reformat my hard drive.

 

Use a Ubuntu or Linux Mint Live DVD, which will allow you to use Gparted to format the drive. You can also do it with the Reinstall DVD from Acer. It will give you an option to format the drive before installing.

 

But as earlier stated, it won't see the CD/DVD player. If I could get it to boot from there, I would have solved the problem a long time ago.

 

Did you try going into the Bios and setting it so that the DVD drive is the first device that it boots up looking for media to boot up with?

 

Been there, done that

 

Not much else to tell you, other than try pulling the battery and power off the unit, do a bios Reset and see if you can get the bios to find the DVD. Only other thing, is that the machine is shot and there is not much else to do for it.

 

Well just one question, is pulling the battery and powering off the unit is how to reset the bios? And thank you for your input.

 

There is actually a battery inside the case, which means taking off the Keyboard on some units, others it is under the cover where the hard drive and/or RAM is located.

The following gives you an idea of how hard it is replacing the bios battery on some Acer models http://www.ehow.com/how_4881944_replace-acer-laptop-cmos-battery.html

 

I think the CMOS battery may be on the underside of the mother board that is located on the bottom of the laptop with an access door so it may be easier to access. Will I need to replace the battery or just remove it and reinstall it?

 

Depending on how old the machine is, you should replace it, if you have had the laptop for over three to four years.

 

the laptop is nearly 8 years old. I opened up and looked at the mother board, the darn CMOS battery it buried under it and the mother board will now come out from this view, that means taking the keyboard off and trying to get to it that way. THAT is going to take some time. Especially sense I nearly cut my thumb off today cutting up carrots for a pot roast! I think I'll take a day or so away from the laptop and let my thumb heal a bit and my nerves to settle down too. I'll be back at it soon, so watch for me.

 

I decided to try one more thing before giving up - I put in a Webroot Security erase Program build 9, first I got a screen that said there was an error on drive 1 and it asked if I want to continue. (I think some of the BIOS are missing)
I said yes and when doing so I get a screen that says
A:\>
so I put in erase:C: and hit enter
then I got a screen that said
All files in C:\'* *' will be deleted! Are you sure (Y|N)?
when I pressed enter again, it said no files found in '* *"
So, no my next question is = what should I type in after the A:\> in order to clean that hard drive up so I can do a clean install? Or is it still a hopeless case?

 

What is the manufacturer & model of the hard drive? If it has been in that machine for eight years, swapping out with a new one would be best. At eight years it is really pushing the hardware, that you may end up just having to get a new one to replace that old one, if it comes down to it.

Here is a 160gb compatible with that model for $78 http://www.amazon.com/1691WLMi-3003WLCI-5050-3242-5050-3336-5600-5563wxmi/dp/B001QWTX7C

This is as close to the machine that I have, and is running at around $10 less then the one that I got for my son & I http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/pdet.to?poid=2000041510 It will run Windows 7, and Linux Mint, along with Ubuntu with no problem.

Worse case scenario with older machines like yours, you just have to stop pouring money into them once they get around that old.

 

Taking your advice and getting a new laptop. Its not worth the headaches to fix this old one! Thanks for all your input.

 

That Toshiba I linked to, just went down to $299.99 http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/pdet.to?poid=2000041510 It will take up to 16GB. I changed the platter drive that came with mine to a 250GB Crucial M500 SSD, and went with 12gb RAM in it.

I do run Windows 8 Pro, also had no problem with running Ubuntu 13.00, or Linux Mint 15, same with Windows 7. You do have to turn off the UEFI and go old school Bios for running the other three OS's. As for Windows 7, you just need to download the Realtek drivers for Wired Ethernet & Wifi Ethernet from Realtek. The AMD driver you can also pull later after you get Windows 7 installed. The only thing that you would have to do that Windows 7 does not install, is that you will show that there is no driver loaded for I do believe the SMBus, but you can get that from the AMD website if you want to, but not really needed.

I run Start8 on both of our machines, to get around the Metro interface, and it runs just like Windows 7, but I can tell you first hand that the Explorer interface for network shares is a whole lot faster, than in 7.