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As of yesterday my desktop doesn't boot/load Windows (XP). BIOS comes up as usual, then everything just goes blank. It was still working fine on Friday.

Any ideas what it could be?

Obvious problem is it sounds like your hard drive is fucked.

Can you go into BIOS, can it see your hard-drive (auto-detect or whatever)?

General Zod wrote:Obvious problem is it sounds like your hard drive is fucked.

Gr-fucking-eat. This isn't good, my last back-up is way out of date. Thanks for your help though.

EDIT

Argosh wrote:Can you go into BIOS, can it see your hard-drive (auto-detect or whatever)?

I'll give that a try. Bios is F8 usually, right? Now to find a wired keyboard...

Define "goes blank". Does the screen go to sleep mode, or does it just stay on to a black screen? Is there a blinking white cursor in the upper left hand corner of the screen?

[R_H] wrote:

General Zod wrote:Obvious problem is it sounds like your hard drive is fucked.

Gr-fucking-eat. This isn't good, my last back-up is way out of date. Thanks for your help though.

Don't listen to Zod. There are many other things that might cause this, including things as simple as having your iPod plugged in while the computer tries to boot.

Dominus Atheos wrote:Define "goes blank". Does the screen go to sleep mode, or does it just stay on to a black screen? Is there a blinking white cursor in the upper left hand corner of the screen?

Blank as in nothing is displayed, a black screen.

iPod was not plugged in, no discs were in the optical drives.

Okay, so professional troubleshooting is a 5 step process.

1. Identify the problem:

When you turn your computer on the BIOS screen comes up just fine but then you just have a blank black screen.

2. Gather more information:

[R_H] wrote:Blank as in nothing is displayed, a black screen.

But the light on the front of the monitor is on, and it's green?
What brand is this computer?
How old is the computer?
What operating system is installed on the computer?
List everything that is currently hooked up to the computer tower, including power cable, monitor cable (VGA or DVI) what type of mouse and keyboard, and anything plugged into the USB, serial, firewire, and parallel ports.
What add-in cards are installed in the computer? Wireless card? Video Card?
Does the computer have it's own VGA out separate from the video card?

Dominus Atheos wrote: 2. Gather more information:

[R_H] wrote:Blank as in nothing is displayed, a black screen.

But the light on the front of the monitor is on, and it's green?
What brand is this computer?
How old is the computer?
What operating system is installed on the computer?
List everything that is currently hooked up to the computer tower, including power cable, monitor cable (VGA or DVI) what type of mouse and keyboard, and anything plugged into the USB, serial, firewire, and parallel ports.
What add-in cards are installed in the computer? Wireless card? Video Card?
Does the computer have it's own VGA out separate from the video card?

Yes, it's green. If it were in sleep mode or not recieving a signal, it would be amber.
Brand was Seanix, I'm not even sure if they exist any more.
HDD is relatively new, no older than 2 years. CPU, motherboard, video card and PSU are about 5 years old.
Windows XP, I believe it's SP2.
VGA monitor cable, USB cable to printer, (USB) wireless receiver for mouse and keyboard (Microsoft Wireless Optical Desktop)
Wireless card and video card, no integrated video.

Try disconnecting everything from the computer except the power cable and monitor cable and see how far it gets with that. If it still doesn't boot try burn a copy of the Ultimate Boot CD from whatever computer you're posting from and see if that boots.

If neither of those things work then it's most likely a hardware issue and you'll most likely have to buy a new computer.

Dominus Atheos wrote:Try disconnecting everything from the computer except the power cable and monitor cable and see how far it gets with that. If it still doesn't boot try burn a copy of the Ultimate Boot CD from whatever computer you're posting from and see if that boots.

If neither of those things work then it's most likely a hardware issue and you'll most likely have to buy a new computer.

Wireless card as well? I'd have no problem with replacing the computer, because I don't really have the time or energy to try to troubleshoot/fix it, I'd just like to recover as much information off the harddrive as possible.

So then take the HDD out and install it into a friends computer, or take it down to a local computer repair shop and ask them if they can get the data off.