Power on, blank screen, no access to ms-dos

[cardiaction]

Hello- I am at a loss here. Computer working fine this morning. Powered down holding the button in, because it was frozen, when turned it back on, the only thing that happened was the tower came on. Nothing coming through on the screen or the keyboard. Called HP but warranty is up. Said I could pay 49 bucks, it had something to do with the configuration and they could fix that somehow over the phone.

Any ideas? I cannot locate a reset button, sort of like my life sometimes!!! Any advice would be appreciated, otherwise, I'm just going to call HP back and pay the 49 bucks.

Btw, it's an HP Pavilion a819n

Thanks
Jen

[patio]

What happened prior to this ? ?
Do you realise that if you do use the Recovery function all your data and installed programs will be gone and the machine will be back to Day One status ? ?

More info....

[hmar]

Can you boot into safe mode, or access bios?

[warpuck]

try using a Linux boot disk like fedora, zenwalk or fat puppy. If the system halts during boot sequence while the kernal is loading that usually indicates a hardware issue. watch it boot on another computer the line after where it halted usually shows you the issue.  Use the verbose mode so you see what is goimg on.  Linux will boot with bad memory and windows will not run without hanging up. If found that out. I am now trying to figure how to load a new bios to correct my windows memory issues. the bios load requires windows to run.