My laptop makes it to the main setup screen and then (instead of showing the windows load screen) it goes black with no audible beeps. Everything was working fine until I removed an old 90's version of Norton. I rebooted to finish the uninstall and that's when the trouble started. None of the startup modes will work and I bought it used,so, as you may have guessed, no disks for reinstalls/repairs. I tried the battery removal trick with no luck. Any help would be great. I have another laptop (Dell Win 7), is it possible to connect them through a network and run a virus scan on the bad one even though they run different os? HP COMPAQ Presario M2000 Windows XP Home Edition SP3 Centrino 1.5GHz Pentium M Processor(Dothan) 256MB RAM 40GB Hard Drive DVD/CDRW combo drive Intel Extreme Graphics 2 Wireless LAN 802.11b, 802.11g
When you say the main setup screen, you mean the manufacturers logo at the very start when you turn your computer on? You don't see the windows loading logo at all? What is the last thing you see before it goes black? Does it go black and stay black or does it restart continuously? Can you get into the bios? You say you have tried it in safe mode (by tapping f8 when it's starting and choosing "safe mode") but it does the same thing? Things to try: 1) Get yourself a windows xp cd from somewhere, images available on many sites, or borrow from a friend. Boot to the cd and then choose r at the right screen to repair or recover. Look at the screen and enter the number that corresponds with your xp installation, usually just 1. Enter admin password to log in and then type the following command and press enter: chkdsk /r Try and reboot after that, also in safe mode if normal doesn't work. 2) If you have access to one, try to plug in an external monitor to your laptop and make sure the signal is sending out to it by using your hotkey combination. See if the display on that is any different, could be something to do with a refresh rate or screen resolution some how going out of range but I doubt that could have started due to uninstalling norton, I think it's worth eliminating anyway.
Yes, the manufacturers logo. The windows loading logo does not show up at all. The mnufaturers logo is the last thing I see before it goes black. It stays black. Yes, I can get into the bios. Yeah, no modes work to load windows. I have tried multiple iso images with no luck at all. The ones that actualy come close to working says "Press any key to load from CD..." When I press a key it starts to load then just stops reading the disk. I tried an external monitor and got the same results.
It sounds to me like you have a serious hardware problem (considering you can't even boot to cd) but first go into the bios and reset it to the default settings and try to boot again, I doubt this will have any effect but worth trying first. Another thing to check is that it's not overheating, make sure all the vents are unblocked and not dusty, I doubt this is the problem though as it would normall shut down if it was too hot. Assuming it still won't boot, you have some dead hardware somewhere, such as motherboard, processor or possibly ram. Can you try different ram in the laptop? Or if it has 2 sticks of ram, take one out and see if it will boot, try one stick in each slot and check, you should be able to tell if it's the ram or the ram slot that is broken. If it doesn't boot in any ram - slot configuration, then sorry, I think you have a dead motherboard or processor, probably motherboard which usually isn't worth replacing. It might be worth you getting another pentium m processor cheap off ebay and putting it, usually pretty easy to do, but no guarentees that it will fix your problem because it's hard to tell if it's the processor or the motherboard without actually replacing one or the other (processer being easiest and cheapest to replace). To be extra sure download and burn a linux iso such as ubuntu and see if you can boot to that, if not, dead laptop.
Start up your PC as it starts to load press the F8 button you will get another screen as soon as you see that go to last known good configuration choose that and let the pc reboot and see does that sort your problem out for you best of luck
