gathermewool
Site Donor 2023
When my home PC was plugged back in two nights ago the plug wasn't fully seated - in fact, it was barely making contact when the computer was started. After loading normally to Windows 7, a slight bump caused the PC to lose power and turn off.
The plug was seated and the PC turned back on. It is unknown which selection was made from the "Windows wasn't properly shut down screen," but it was most likely, "start windows normally." The windows icon appeared and then the screen went blank with only the cursor visible.
The cursor can be moved on the black screen, but even after sitting over night and trying a few dozen hard resets, no change is noted.
A USB flash drive was inserted at the time.
I performed all Windows and Dell diagnostics (F8, F2 and F12 to gain access to the recovery partition, BIOS, and other settings,) with all tests coming back SAT. Last known good configuration didn't work after half a dozen tries, the startup repair didn't work, and Windows Restore wouldn't run from the recovery partition - as soon as the PC was restarted it would load to the black screen. This was allowed to run over night to see if the system restore was running in the back ground, but the screen was still black the next morning when checked. Angry
Outside of the above onboard diagnostics, I've been searching and following the easier instructions online, with no luck or change. It appears that something in the OS was corrupted and the only solution now would be to reformat and reload Windows.
If any one has any experience with a fix for this, please let me know. Unfortunately, this drive has not been backed up in a very, very long time. To get the data back I'm going to install a second HDD with XP loaded and try to boot that and see if the problem HDD will be visible. I've got some other methods I'm going to attempt, too, if that doesn't work, but any recommendations would be great for this, as well.
The plug was seated and the PC turned back on. It is unknown which selection was made from the "Windows wasn't properly shut down screen," but it was most likely, "start windows normally." The windows icon appeared and then the screen went blank with only the cursor visible.
The cursor can be moved on the black screen, but even after sitting over night and trying a few dozen hard resets, no change is noted.
A USB flash drive was inserted at the time.
I performed all Windows and Dell diagnostics (F8, F2 and F12 to gain access to the recovery partition, BIOS, and other settings,) with all tests coming back SAT. Last known good configuration didn't work after half a dozen tries, the startup repair didn't work, and Windows Restore wouldn't run from the recovery partition - as soon as the PC was restarted it would load to the black screen. This was allowed to run over night to see if the system restore was running in the back ground, but the screen was still black the next morning when checked. Angry
Outside of the above onboard diagnostics, I've been searching and following the easier instructions online, with no luck or change. It appears that something in the OS was corrupted and the only solution now would be to reformat and reload Windows.
If any one has any experience with a fix for this, please let me know. Unfortunately, this drive has not been backed up in a very, very long time. To get the data back I'm going to install a second HDD with XP loaded and try to boot that and see if the problem HDD will be visible. I've got some other methods I'm going to attempt, too, if that doesn't work, but any recommendations would be great for this, as well.