no post screen

during the boot process of my dell laptop it begins to run but where the post screen is supposed to be i just have a blinking cursor. i can access bios and the boot selection screens. i have looked in the bios and reset them to default. i have ran a diagnostic from the boot screen. if i run the windows disk i can get to dos. i ran a check disk and it said my disk was fine.

once again the laptop will not boot and stalls before the post screen.

what's up?

thanks
travis

 

sorry my technobabble is lacking. you know that screen that scrolls through your processor speed, memory, bios version etc..
instead of that i get a blinking cursor in the upper left corner. and that's it. i even left it for 10 min to see if it would do anything. no luck.

all i get is the opportunity to press f2 for bios and f12 for boot sequence then nothing.

does that clear things up