My computer won't start up past the boot screen

Rogue 9 · Post by **Rogue 9** » 2008-09-25 01:29pm

Just what the title says. My computer will turn on, but refuses to load past the initial screen shown during bootup. It'll sit there for several minutes, when usually it's not there for more than three seconds.

It worked fine this morning, but the power supply fan started buzzing overnight. I shut it off to get rid of the noise, and it turned on fine when I got home from work today, but was still buzzing. So I opened up the case, blew the dust out of the power supply, and turned it back on, at which point this problem started. The computer seems to physically run fine; all the fans work, the buzzing stopped when I cleaned out the power supply fan, the hard drive spins, and so on. It just won't boot up. What gives?

White Haven · Post by **White Haven** » 2008-09-25 01:47pm

When you say the initial screen, are you referring to the BIOS splash screen, or what? If it's hanging at the BIOS splash (Or dell logo or HP scribble, or whatever) that's sometimes caused by HDD or drive controller failure; the BIOS tries to autodetect drives at that point, and if for some reason it can't resolve one of them, it hangs. Also, since oyu had the case open, check and re-seat all your drive cables, if one of them was a touch loose to begin with, it'd be quite easy to knock it loosER without noticing.

Good luck!

Rogue 9 · Post by **Rogue 9** » 2008-09-25 01:48pm

The HP scribble, in my case. I can't get it to do anything from there. I'll try the drives.

Dominus Atheos · Post by **Dominus Atheos** » 2008-09-25 06:12pm

I'd strongly recommend contacting your computer's technical support about this issue rather then posting about it on a star trek vs star wars message board. I know HP has free online chat support for all of it's computers regardless of warranty status. Here's the link.

Rogue 9 · Post by **Rogue 9** » 2008-09-26 03:55pm

Well, I got it fixed, and 45 minutes later my power supply's cooling fan failed. Fuck.

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2008-09-26 04:01pm

Dominus Atheos wrote:I'd strongly recommend contacting your computer's technical support about this issue rather then posting about it on a star trek vs star wars message board. I know HP has free online chat support for all of it's computers regardless of warranty status. Here's the link.

I've found HP's online chat technicians to be virtually useless the few times I've tried using them. Especially when many of their support reps speak even less comprehensible English than some of the posters on here.

Rogue 9 · Post by **Rogue 9** » 2008-09-26 04:06pm

The one I got for the issue I posted the thread for was actually competent and got my computer working. The one I got when I asked about my power supply was barely comprehensible; from his grammar and syntax (not to mention given name) I'd guess he was German. I suppose it's sort of a crapshoot.