black screen with blinking cursor

[firerose67]

Turned on my sons Compaq desktop got a black screen w/ a blinking cursor. Hit F10 and tried to do a system dig and couldnt find the option.... Help!

[Big_Dave]

Hi,

Please post the product number for your PC.

There could be a number of things that cause this issue.

1. Boot into the bios and make sure that the hard drive is recognized.
2. Make sure that the hard drive is set as the first (preferred for now) or second boot device.
3. Remove any CDs from the optical drives.
4. Disconnect all use devices except the keyboard and mouse.

If the above checks out OK then the hard drive might be bad or a virus has wiped out the operating system or the boot partition might not be set to active.

What operating system is being used? 

[Fresco]

OMG... this just happened to me yesterday... tried everything I could think of to get it to boot up... with no luck.  Took the side off the tower to clean off any dust (yeah, reaching for straws when drowning) and noticed the fans on the motherboard kicked in, but would not boot up for nothing. 

  Took my computer in to see if they could get it to boot up... but it was beyond saving.  Graphics card was the culprit, and since it was intergrated to the motherboard... I was up the creek.  Bought a new machine and trying to get it up and running asap.   Wishing you all the luck and much success with your issue...

[Big_Dave]

@Fresco,

I have never seen a video card, integrated or discrete,  cause the black screen with a blinking cursor but I'll give you credit for it if it happened to you.

[firerose67 · Accepted solution]

ok... I did a hard turn off (pushed and held down the button on the tower) I got 2 choices, one sent me to the BIOs and the second whitch sounded like something I really didnt want to do. But becouse I had no other option I chose it and it went into a scan disk and re booted the system and it loaded with no problem. thank you to everyone who responed to this post! 

[Fresco]

thanks Big Dave!!

Its all greek to me... total noob here... just going by what the "geek squad" told me, when they diagnosed my Desktop was a goner.

(Hoping I just didn't toss a perfectly good/salvageable machine, and dropped major coin for a new one, while I was pumping more coin in my old desktop yesterday, just to find out it was a goner.  Pumping good money after bad is never fun, but had to try.)

thanks again, Dave...

*and good luck to the thread starter on his issue!!!

[Big_Dave]

@firerose67,

That about sums it up.

[INeedHelpPpl]

can you guys give me an image of the "tower" i dont know what it is.