# Compaq XP Home Black Screen



## How Do I (Feb 11, 2008)

My sister just called stating that her XP Home computer is just booting to a black screen, does the same thing when she tries to boot through safe mode. I think she had a virus discovered a few days ago and it was supposedly contained. Since I jumped from ME to Vista, I'm not real familiar with XP. Is there any way she can boot from CD-ROM? She has 7 disks that came with her laptop:

compaq os cd xp home

compaq quickrestore

application recovery cd

compaq quikrestore system recovery cd 4 disks

Can she use one of these to boot from so she can back-up her data and then maybe run another virus scan? 

I'm thinking we should be using this reference to start out with?? Correct me if I'm wrong, please. Suggestions are appreciated. Thanks.


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## Mechanic Intern (Jun 10, 2007)

OK, here's my troubleshoot script written in layman's terms. If there is no picture at all on the monitor (including the POST screen (an all black screen with white type on it, that no non-geek can ever hope to interpret\understand)) then try a different monitor (assuming a desktop setup; a laptop setup, you just try your known-to-work desktop monitor through the monitor port) and if there's still no video then you've got a dead graphics card. On a laptop, a dead graphics card is almost impossible to fix without a soldering iron and a whole lot of duct tape. On a desktop, the graphics card is generally pretty easy to replace... IF you know what you're doing. BUT if she's getting video before Windows tries to load, then that indicates that the graphics card is fine, and windows is just having a problem using it (either the graphics driver is missing, corrupt, or just not being used). I'd also ask your sister (and this is gonna sound stupid, but just ask her, and PM me with her answer) if she disabled any devices in windows device manager that start with "NVIDIA" or "ATI". I've heard of people who've very deliberately disabled their graphics cards, and then wondered why their computer don't boot anymore. If she answers "no" then tell her to go to 

http://www.ubuntu.com/products/WhatIsUbuntu/desktopedition

on a working computer, and see if she can get a free Ubuntu CD that she'll use to boot her computer (don't worry; nothing will be erased unless she tells it to install) and then she can use nautilus (the LINUX equivelant of Windows explorer) to browse to "C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\My Documents" and salvage her documents, music, pics, etc to a USB thumb drive before she does the system reload. I can't tell you how many times LINUX has saved windows' ass, and I bet you that it'll do it again happily. Once she's got all her documents on a safe place (like a USB thumb drive) then she can go ahead with the system reload. I haven't a clue about how to go about that, but it should be pretty self explanatory (particularly if she's got the manual). A few things to note about Ubuntu; it uses a different way of labeling the drives, so she'll need to know what the drive was *named* rather than it's drive letter; to get initial access to the drive, she'll have to look at the little bar along the top of the screen, click on "places", and select one of the drives under the drives section (should start right under the "home" folder entry in that list. After that, she should be good to go... just like new.


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## Kung (Jan 19, 2004)

Simply put, if it's getting a 'video' screen when you start up, but boots to a black screen where you'd normally get that Windows screen, AND it won't go into safe mode...then at the least, there's something wrong software-wise with Windows that is serious enough to prevent booting into safe mode. This being the case, what I normally try to do is determine if it's hardware or software related, but I'm not sure if you have the ability or resources to do that.

What I would probably do in your case is what MI recommendd above - it's called a Windows XP repair install. What that does is essentially replace the files in your C:\Windows directory. It does NOT touch your data files (i.e., music, documents, etc.), although like any good tech, I will recommend backing your stuff up in the future and I sure hope that's been done already. And if you can, yeah, I'd recommend an Ubuntu CD because it *should* let you find your Windows partition, and maybe safe stuff to a USB drive or dongle.

Once that's done, to do a repair install:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/helpandsupport/learnmore/tips/doug92.mspx


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## How Do I (Feb 11, 2008)

She ended taking it to BB and having one of the "geeks" take a look at it. They charged her for retrieving her files, then charged her for doing a diagnostics run, now they are saying the HD is at fault and selling her a new HD. What a scam. Not to mention they're offering to install Windows OS on new HD for another $129. It was booting up to the welcome screen and stalling at a black screen. If nothing else, I would have retrieved the files and then tried to reinstall Windows before putting any more money into it. It's her money though. What can you do? Best Buy techs know everything and no way would they try to cross-sell to their unsuspecting customers


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## Mechanic Intern (Jun 10, 2007)

OMG!! Best Buy's supposed "geek squad" has got to be the ugliest bunch of tech illiterate dumbos I've ever seen! And that's the politically correct way of putting it!!! when I took my computer (an old HP Pavilion XT963) to them to troubleshoot what turned out to be a bad power supply, they tried to sell me on buying basically a whole new computer; new mobo, new RAM, new CD drive, everything new but the power supply and case!!! IMNNHO (In My Nowhere Near Humble Opinion) *they* should be the idiots going under, not circuit city!! Excuse me while I go into the back yard and scream obscenities at the top of my lungs.


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## MELOC (Sep 26, 2005)

this seems to be one of those cases where i feel justified in my advice to buy or build a generic pc. proprietary hard drives with a partitioned recovery area are expensive to replace when an alternative could be to use a generic "of the shelf" hard drive and the users very own hard copy (on the users very own disc) of an operating system.


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## mnn2501 (Apr 2, 2008)

Mechanic Intern said:


> OMG!! Best Buy's supposed "geek squad" has got to be the ugliest bunch of tech illiterate dumbos I've ever seen! And that's the politically correct way of putting it!!! when I took my computer (an old HP Pavilion XT963) to them to troubleshoot what turned out to be a bad power supply, they tried to sell me on buying basically a whole new computer; new mobo, new RAM, new CD drive, everything new but the power supply and case!!! IMNNHO (In My Nowhere Near Humble Opinion) *they* should be the idiots going under, not circuit city!! Excuse me while I go into the back yard and scream obscenities at the top of my lungs.


Aww come on, tell us how you really feel. lol
I agree with everything you said about BB tech, let me also add that Dell techs are as bad if not worse.


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## pcdreams (Sep 13, 2003)

Heres a little trick if you need to backup files on an HP or compaq

boot to recovery manager (using f11 when you turn the system on)

once into the recovery manager press alt+d which will take you to a command prompt

type notepad and notepad should open

if you go to file--> open you can navigate to any files you want to save graphically. You will want to change file type to all files

once you locate the files you want to save you can simply select them with ctrl+c (or ctrl+a to select all files in a directory) then navigate to your flash drive, external hard drive, etc.. and ctrl+V (copies the files you selected to this directory)

This maybe of limited use to your friend.. some xp systems have recovery partitions some dont

I had a customer once who had her thesis on a system that was doing exactly what you describe and was looking at a recovery at this point.. Was able to save her this way... Rave Review!!!


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## HermitJohn (May 10, 2002)

A linux live cd is easiest way to retreive windows files if hardrive isnt encrypted. It doesnt give fig about windows security otherwise, it just sees files and can use the cdrw or dvdrw to burn them or can move them just like windows file manager. All with gui interface.

But I can appreciate somebody wanting to use a windows command line.... LOL


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## Kung (Jan 19, 2004)

What HJ said. I use a bootable cd myself (although it's UBCD4Win, not a live Linux CD). About the only way it won't work is if the hard drive is COMPLETELY dead.

BTW, just because Best Buy people are screwups sometimes doesn't mean they ALL are. I have done troublecalls and had countless hard drives give me errors, denoting they were on their way out.


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