I am working on my friend's mom computer. The OS has been wiped out. I have three different OS's here. And it will not boot from disc. I have tried XP. Even tried Linux, about to try Vista if all else fails. It is just a black screen when computer turns on. Any ideas what to do? Or even how to get into the BIOS possibly? I know how to reformat if the disc will boot. Please help a poor lady that misses her computer.

Completely black screen? Does it turn on? If not, check power supply, if it does but the comp doesn't come up, it might be a fried mother board

If the mother board was fried it would not even turn on. Only thing wrong is the OS.

thats exactly what i was thinking...mine did that when the mother board was cracked...my bigfoot was not tacked down and hit it and cracked it..i never knew till we took it apart

oh no ! did you get that virus that uk alerted us to
yesterday?
i hope not.
i don't know how to send the link, but in the general discussion
there's 'virus alert' you should read it.
i'm sorry thats all the help i can be.
good luck.

If you can hear your computer boot but don't see anything but black screen it sould be a bad video card or monitor. If you hear the fans and harddrive working normal then I would check the video first. Good luck.

Thanks, but again the mother board is fine. I know how to tell when it is shot. Onlything wrong is the OS.

okay sorry...wish i could help....adj4u is pretty good...maybe email him...

Thank you. How would I go abouts doing that with out being able to get into the system?

This is Where my dos commands paid of in college YAYAYAYAY about only thing I remember hahah

You need dos off a Floppy then put in the commands manually make a boot disk i would be here all day typing telling what yo to do,

Shut down completely and reboot and then try to re install OS

hey, call who ever you have for a server and get the tech, help line and they can walk you through it, i had problem similar to that. try it

Well if you get lights(power) and stuff The first thing is to see if it POST tests...display text on the screen like Phoenix bios. Assume you get that... try F2 sometimes <DEL> will get you into the BIOS setup. Once there make sure that boot-up is set to boot from cd or similar. Then safe exit and re-boot. Also to boot from CDROM the cd has to be an ISO image, not just a straight copy. If you don't see anything aat all on the screen ever...check video cable, video card. If has onboard video sometimes you will need to connect the extra AGP power plug to the mother board from the power supply, 'cause the outside gate can draw to much power. How old is the PC? Does the Monitor light a power light?

Hope some of this helps

sounds like cd rom is not being recognized

Hey everybody I found the problem I had the monitor plugged into the wrong spot. Did not realize there was two spots for it. Still having the OS problem though. It needs a new on but it is not allowing me to boot XP from disc.

If you have an SATA hard drive, you will need to load a driver before you can install the OS