Black screen can't recover

[jimgardner]

Tried to reinstall windows XP on my backup laptop that was running Windows 8.1 ( it was previously Windows 10 but a HD failure required system recovery last week which put my laptop back to 8.1). Now I can't boot up. Power is there and the attached cd drive powers up but I have a black screen. I can't even use the f11 key to boot into recovery mode which has worked previously. No keys work at all. Have tried taking out and putting battery back in but that doesn't help.

[Lil_Boy_Blue]

Hi

Don't try this at home  .....

Make a DVD/USB with this on 

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

or even better

https://lubuntu.net/downloads/

then boot from it and post the results please.

This is overkill....

Turn off the computer.

Disconnect all connected devices and cables, Media Drives, USB drives, printers, & faxes.
Remove media from internal drives, and remove any recently added internal hardware.
Do not disconnect the monitor, keyboard, mouse, or power cord.

Turn on the computer and repeatedly press the F11 key, about once every second,
until the Choose an option screen is displayed, and then continue.

On the Choose an Option screen, click Troubleshoot, and work your way through the screens.

[jimgardner]

Wont boot from either the CD drive or USB.  Power comes on and I can hear the CD drive but nothing happens.  pressing any function key eg F11 or Esc to go into recovery mode or into BIOS settings has no effect!