pc problem

Not sure whats happened but my pc just locked up and I couldnt close it normally. Turned it off at the power and tried to reboot..now I can get to dell screen,it loads to a black screen with a white cursor and just sits there....tried to reboot using the f12 option but nada..is this my hard drive dead?

Fai <3

This isn't good. Probably your hard drive, but not necessarily.

On my daughters Dell, hitting the F2 key during start up will get you into the bios or setup menu. From there you can go into the boot menu and see if your hard drive is even an option.

You can also look at the IDE configuration, or SATA, if your computer has that.

There may be other tests. Depends on the computer. Don't go changing anything tho. (If you accidentally do, there should be an exit without save option.)

Might be another key, or key combination to get into bios. But honestly, if you don't know what you're doing, tread very lightly.

If the computer is under warranty, it's definitely time to give Dell a call.

thanks for the reply yes I got into the boot menu using f12 and the hard drive is there but nothing happens...weirdly Ive left it at the black screen and just now the *your computer was not closed properly would you like to reboot * etc..ive hit yes so am waiting to see what happens..i can hear it churninggggg over inside the tower verrrry slowly like its all glued up...very weird...nothing has happened so far. Strange thing is..since mondays maintenance (proably not related at all lol) Ive had quite a few *lock ups* whilst in sl and it wont quit normally either, sort of hangs and i have to get the task manager up to close it.

What operating system do you have XP, Vista or Windows 7 ? Sometimes it is better to switch it off and leave it for some 15 to 20 minutes to clear what was in memory etc before switching it back on.

Is this a desktop or laptop computer?

It's not necessarily not related to the recent maintenance. Try disconnecting peripherals like the printer and such. I had an issue recently where the same thing was happening, and I happened to look at the printer and the power light was flickering oddly. Unplugged the printer and the computer booted right back up. Unplug ANYTHING that plugs in via USB except keyboard and mouse, see if that helps. If it does, power off all peripherals then power them back on and reconnect to the PC.

Desktop, it seems.

Sometimes a peripheral will lock up the BIOS like that. A USB hard drive, a printer with a card reader, a keyboard with USB plugs or a CAC reader, or even a flash card reader.

Unplug them all and try again.

When you turn it back on, hit F12. Select Diagnostics.

If there's a hardware problem it'll find it.

My desktop Vista often does something similar. It's sometimes impossible to close SL down (standard viewer) although other programmes run fine. I have to restart the machine and wait - it takes minutes to close down before starting up again.

Last night the viewer appeared to close normally. About an hour or more later, other programmes also closed normally, but I couldn't shut the machine down. Nothing happened when I tried to. Ctrl-alt-del brought the blue choices screen up, but it wouldn't come up again after that. I ended up pulling the power. Today when I opened the standard viewer, it thought it had crashed (last night), even though it had appeared to close an hour or more before I turned the computer off. I ran an anti-virus scan, but only tracking cookies were found.

When the viewer can't be closed, even from the task manager, it happens when I'm doing perfectly normal things, such as flying a short distance in the place where I've been for hours, or just walking - it just happens. Last night was different because it had appeared to close normally.

A friend had the same problem with the printer, when left it pluged in all we got was a blank screen but unpluged would start up normally.

Worth a try, if nothing else works !

you can try this..
turn off the system..then unplug the computer and make sure the light on the motherboard goes out after you unplug it..

then take out all of your ram...

Then put in one piece of memory and plug it back in..then reboot..

if it takes you to the windows load screen and boots..then repeat the same process with each piece of memory by itself..

then once that is done if they all take you to the boot screen..you repeat the process again But adding the the memory on each boot..don't forget to unplug it each time letting that green light go out on th motherboard..

like if you have 3 sticks of ram you would add the first .then boot then add the second then boot and add the last piece and then boot..till all the memory is back in..


you could also clear your cmos also before doing this..

I had a similar problem recently from a virus that i thought had killed my computer..
it had me locked up even before the bios.. so i hooked up an older computer and got on the net and found this worked for a lot of boot issues..

Ceka's advice is good for testing memory. While you're in there, you might want to blow out any dust you find. inside.

I actually did a full memory check (and all the other checks I could think of) when it was clear that my crashes were regular, and it's all good.