old comp wont start windows....black screen upon boot
 

i recently hooked my old comp (dell dimension L1000R) back up and when i go to start it seems like it is going to boot but stops at a black screen with a blinking - in the upper left corner....no clue even where to begin. i do have an emergency boot disc but couldnt find any options there. any help would be greatly appreciated

Re: old comp wont start windows....black screen upon boot
 

It could be possible that the bios went bad, but first i'd test it by trying different ram, if that don't work try unplugging one ide cable & rebooting, then the other. that would narrow it down to other problems.

Re: old comp wont start windows....black screen upon boot
 

My Pavilion is doing that right now, it was caused by trying the assorted device drivers for the display adapter... I reckoned I had Intel based chips and the drivers are causing odd results.... so far I don't have a good driver to increase the display properties, but restarting has made a difference, I've gotten several results thus far, so not dead yet thankfully. I did have the blinking cursor you mention...at that point, the PC required a reboot... hold the power button until shut down, most PC, regardless of age, allow this, rather then unplug anything.
Bill

Re: old comp wont start windows....black screen upon boot
 

Black screen with the white cursor flashing in the corner usually indicates a master boot sequence failure. Try testing your hard drive on someone's computer. If it's registered by the other computer then your problem lies with your motherboard or RAM. I would suggest a destructive format

Re: old comp wont start windows....black screen upon boot
 

Same issue--see other threads if needed ;)

I DO get a master boot sequence error-- what does this mean?

The HDD is readable by other computers as external etc...
Did all other suggested troubleshooting: cmos battery etc.

Re: old comp wont start windows....black screen upon boot
 

Bill-
I'm having this exact problem with my HP--
can you elaborate what you've done so I can try on mine?
I have had a hunch that the display PCI card could be variable...but-- not being able to boot? i dont know.

Any help is appreciated!

Re: old comp wont start windows....black screen upon boot
 

try swap the RAM on different slot.
reseat the HDD cable may help.

if blinking cursor appear before the windows logo, the MBR may be corrupted, just boot to the windows CD, and run the recovery option to fix the MBR problem.

Hope this helps!
Bill

Re: old comp wont start windows....black screen upon boot
 

Yea try a system restore or a recovery. If neither of those work then what you're left with is nothing else than a destructive format. Sorry if this isn't more helpful. But that is the cut and dried. When you can't reverse the problem you have to format

Re: old comp wont start windows....black screen upon boot
 

If you're getting a master boot sequence failure, that means you have corupt or damaged windows systems files. And the fact that it was read my another computer as an external storage device only confirms it. Plug your hard drive back into a working computer and save any and all files you want to keep then do a destructive format on the harddrive

Re: old comp wont start windows....black screen upon boot
 

Thanks for this.

Strange that this has happened more than once... could be the drive is just not reliable or theres some sort of windows bug?

Will see if I can reformat and reinstall. Already backed up files...