Black screen on start up

[allan1957]

My daughter jus called me, I gave her my old Toshiba lap top with Vista, always was a good machine, now for no reason got a black screen with a curser, can any one help

[jason2074]

Have you tried removing the hard drive and reinserting it back? Inspect for any dent/missing pins while doing the suggestion. The drive could have been slightly dislodge or worst case, failed.

[Allan]

Sorry, but without more information it's impossible to assist. We would need to know:

1) More about the specific hardware

2) What is new or different since the last time everything worked properly (ie, new hw, new sw, virus, error, etc)?

3) EXACTLY what happens when you try to boot the system

4) Can you boot to safe mode?

5) What happens when you try to access advanced boot options (F8) at boot?

and anything else you think of that might be relevant.

[mathis.ws]

I would power on the computer wait for the screen with the cursor, hold down the power button for at least 10 seconds until the computer powers off.  Then disconnect the power and pull out the battery out... then try again.  About 50% of the time over the last 11 years when my customers have run into similar problems (including today) it has had to do with shutting the computer down wrong or getting stuck coming out hibernation/sleep.  All that said you could have one of a plethora of unrelated problems.

Thanks

Mike

[allan1957]

I have tried the shutdown method by holding down the start button for 10 seconds, then remove the battery & start up again, left it saying with the blue screen background - Please wait, left this like this for 4 hours, I then managed to select safe mode, just keeps on going round in circles, screen just says one of the files needs to be checked for consistency, then lots of rows saying deleting index entry, then says removing orphaned file, then back to that blue screen saying please wait, then it restarts itself & keeps on going around the above in circles

[patio]

Boot to safemode...
Open a command prompt from Start/Programs/Accessories...
Type in chkdsk /r and hit Enter...

NOTE: If you get a prompt stating "volume is in use do you want to run at start? "...select Yes and re-boot.

Do NOT interrupt it once it starts.