Did My computer break?

[Zerotonite]

First off my computer spec's : HP XT 868 running windows XP pro, 1.2ghz, 512ram, 80gig hd and a geforce4 TI 4400. Now onto the problem.
All of a sudden one day I woke up in the morning went to boot up computer and nothing happened, well something happened this: Computer turns on fine, no weird noise or nothing. Well when I turned it on it goes to the blue HP screen makes a booting up noise which is normal then straight to a black screen with the cursor blinking on the top left corner and thats it, it wont boot up to windows, i recieve no error messages. I opened the computer up nothing looked fried or out of place, I disconnected and re-connected everything and still encounter the same problem of going back to the black screen with the blinking cursor and never booting to windows. I tried entering safe mode( didnt work), I tried putting in the sys recovery cd's that came with the computer and win xp cd, then restarting but nothing helps. Anything from you guys would be great since I have info on my computer with is very important to me. Thanks for any help you can give me.

[caperjack]

first thing i would do(unless everything is unboard ) is remove any addin cards like modem and sound ,usb ,and reboot if it boots then add the cards back in one at a time till it doesent boot .not saying this will work just saing its the first thing i would do !

[aeinstein]

First off my computer spec's : HP XT 868 running windows XP pro, 1.2ghz, 512ram, 80gig hd and a geforce4 TI 4400. Now onto the problem.
All of a sudden one day I woke up in the morning went to boot up computer and nothing happened, well something happened this: Computer turns on fine, no weird noise or nothing. Well when I turned it on it goes to the blue HP screen makes a booting up noise which is normal then straight to a black screen with the cursor blinking on the top left corner and thats it, it wont boot up to windows, i recieve no error messages. I opened the computer up nothing looked fried or out of place, I disconnected and re-connected everything and still encounter the same problem of going back to the black screen with the blinking cursor and never booting to windows. I tried entering safe mode( didnt work), I tried putting in the sys recovery cd's that came with the computer and win xp cd, then restarting but nothing helps. Anything from you guys would be great since I have info on my computer with is very important to me. Thanks for any help you can give me.

have u tried booting from a boot disk/CD?

[Dani]

Moving this out of the Windows 9x sub-forum and into the general Windows forum (which is intended for Windows NT/2000/XP/2003/misc.)

[future edit]I don't know what I was thinking. This belongs in the hardware forum. We haven't even loaded Windows![/future edit]

[fakespike]

i had such a problem. i remember taking it to repair and the guy told me there was nothing we can do but format. but i understand that might not be a good option for you so try this reinstall windows on top of its current installation. your data will stay there. if that doesnt work install it on another drive then backup and format ur drive.
thats what i would do. i think its a software problem not hardware.

[smsawyer]

i agree with fake, it doesn't sound like anything that sounds like it could be caused by hardware.. is this a comp you bought or did you build it?

i have noticed windows xp is very touchy.. if you install something that doesn't mesh with it, it can cause problems.. i have had to reformat one of mine twice as a result of software issues.. did the graphics card you mentioned come with it? or did you add any new hardware to it recently that required software or drivers to be installed from a disk?

[zonfiar]

Okay, I understand this is a bit late for an answer, considering it was over an hour ago, but perhaps this will be of some help to others who are having the same problem.

I used my computer and it worked fine. When I woke up the next day it booted fine, except when it was supossed to boot into windows. Here is where the screen went black with a blinking cursor on the top left.

Nothing worked. I couldn't boot from the Windows cd, couldn't do anything. Ultimatley I found the three pin cmos setup (mine was three pinned with a white cap on two of the pins. your motherboard manual should explain this). and switched the pins, holding the cap halfway up. This shorted the cmos memory and reset it. Then when I rebooted the computer I was able to go into setup and reset my configuration, which ultimately fixed the problem and allowed my computer to continue on to Windows.

Hope this helps.

[Rueful Rogue]

Because you are NOT booting to the O/S, I suspect the BIOS problems. Do you see the usual BIOS related stuff during the initial boot-up before it starts loading Windows? (Did you usually see it before the problem began?)

Because you are not booting to Windows, I suspect that the BIOS is NOT WORKING and that's probably due to a dead battery. Some computers have this battery soldered directly into the motherboard while the newer ones are clipped in and much easier to replace. Before I did much of anything else, I'd try checking (or replacing) this battery. No battery power, no boot-up. Just a black screen.

[toyman]

For this one my mind keeps going with the bios. Check to see if the CMOS battery died, if it did the system time will be wrong. If your mainboard has ISA slots winXP does not like it.

First off my computer spec's : HP XT 868 running windows XP pro, 1.2ghz, 512ram, 80gig hd and a geforce4 TI 4400. Now onto the problem.
All of a sudden one day I woke up in the morning went to boot up computer and nothing happened, well something happened this: Computer turns on fine, no weird noise or nothing. Well when I turned it on it goes to the blue HP screen makes a booting up noise which is normal then straight to a black screen with the cursor blinking on the top left corner and thats it, it wont boot up to windows, i recieve no error messages. I opened the computer up nothing looked fried or out of place, I disconnected and re-connected everything and still encounter the same problem of going back to the black screen with the blinking cursor and never booting to windows. I tried entering safe mode( didnt work), I tried putting in the sys recovery cd's that came with the computer and win xp cd, then restarting but nothing helps. Anything from you guys would be great since I have info on my computer with is very important to me. Thanks for any help you can give me.

[anastacia]

yup thsat more like a problem. its dfefinitely not a hardware problem. it gorrs be softeare stuff. maybe your os got corrupted or as said above the bios is creating this problem. u gotts check it thouroughly
hoipe was of any help