WinXP black screen, white cursor, no bios no post

My Dell Desktop starts up and goes straight to a black screen with a flashing white cursor. No Bios, no post, just turns on and a black screen with a flashing cursor at the top left.

Nothing changed in between when it started doing this and before, no downloads, nothing. Completely random.

I tried booting without the CD or Floppy drive connected, but it didn't work. So then I tried changing which SATA slot my HD was plugged into, with the CD and Floppy still unplugged. When I did this, I turned on my computer and the Dell Splash and loading bar came up, but I was not able to access the BIOS when the loading bar was going. The loading bar froze at the Dell Splash and did not move at all, and I couldn't type any commands or access the bios when it froze.

Shortly after this progress, I tried plugging in the CD and Floppy drive again, but then it went straight back to the black screen and flashing white cursor. I unplugged the drives again to see if the Dell Splash and loading bar would come up as it had before. But now it just went straight back to the black screen and white cursor. All my progress lost. I tried all the different SATA ports, and different variations of CD drive and floppy drive plugged in or not plugged in. Nothing worked, and all resulted in the same black screen and flashing white cursor.

Any advice would be appreciated.

 

try pulling a bar of memory out if you have more than 1 then try the other one. You could try flushing your CMOS, there should be a jumper on the mother board for this

 

I'll try the RAM thing, but I have reset the CMOS to no avail. I do have two sticks of RAM though, so we'll see.

Thanks for the reply.

 

hey brandon

i read your blog this morning. i have the IDENTICAL problem but only with my laptop.

Did you manage to find out what the problem was? I called various places to ask about repairs but after this has been done i may as well have bought a new one!

any advice would be much appreciated

thanks!

 

Exactly the same problem here; it started three days ago. Dell Inspiron 5150.

 

hey guys

i have tried everything. apparently if you change the RAM and that still doesnt work it is the motherboard.

buy a new computer! not much more than the motherboard and it will at least have a guarantee! stay away from DELL as well. they are rubbish. i have had endless rpbolems including RAM crashes, HDD crashes and screen problems.

good luck