When I turn on my notebook, after the startup screen all I see is a black screen!

[ComputerQuestio]

Notebooks naturally get hot underneath them. Sometimes they may occasionally turn off when overheating, then when you turn them back on they have to do that disk check thing. Anyway, last night my notebook got really hot underneath and then it turned off. I turned it back on. The screen had the usual "ACER" logo and at the bottom of the computer it said press F2 for setup, then after that, it had a black screen and just stayed like that. If I started to press keys on the keyboard, after a few keystrokes it would then start to beep each time a key was pressed. If I turned it off and turned it back on again, it would do the same thing. I can, however, get into the OS Choices Menu and “Windows Advanced Options Menu” by pressing F5 when it has that "ACER" startup screen. I tried Safe Mode, Safe Mode with Networking, and Last Known Good Configuration. However, after selecting one of those options, it just goes into the black screen again. I don’t know about any of those other options on that menu, so I didn’t try them. Although I don’t know anything about BIOS, I can also get into that by pressing F2 when starting up.

The notebook is two and a half years old, so the warranty no longer applies. I backed up my whole system about 4 months ago with a 500 GB external hard drive, so I do have most of it backed up, although a lot isn’t backed up.

Is there anything that you would recommend or what type of place to go to? I don't have a lot of money right now to go buy another notebook or spend tons on getting it fixed. Do you think it’s hopeless, or is there hope? Do you think that some circuit just got fried and can be fixed, or do you think it’s basically lights out for the notebook? If I have to pay a $100 just for a place to even look at it and then they shake their heads right away and say it's hopeless, I might as well put that $100 towards a new notebook. However, it would be really nice to save the notebook, and possibly save what wasn't backed up from the last four months.

Thank you so much!

[mjc]

Can you access the BIOS or does that go to black too?

If you can access the BIOS, try setting it to boot from the optical drive and then, use a Linux LiveCD to boot from...if it boots and the screen stays 'lit', your problem is most likely a Windows one.

[ComputerQuestio]

Yea, it'll go into PhoenixBIOS Setup Utility when I press F2 right away when that "ACER" screen shows. If arrow over to "Boot", there's a "CD-ROM/DVD Drive". Is that what I need?

Is a Linux LiveCD something you need to buy from a store, or can you download it online and burn it to a CD-R. Sorry for my ignorance, I don't really know about Linux other than it's an operating system, and I can almost swear someone told me it's free.

[mjc]

I prefer Knoppix...http://www.knoppix.net/

Download the ISO and burn it to a disk.

Yes, the CD/DVD is the item you want to have first in the boot order...

[Sylvander]

Here's the direct link to the Knoppix 5.1.1 ISO file download window. (ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/dist/knoppix/KNOPPIX_V5.1.1CD-2007-01-04-EN.iso)

[Sylvander]

Regarding failure of Windows to load successfully:
Black Screen on Boot
CAUSE
The master boot record (MBR), partition tables, boot sector, or NTLDR file is corrupted. (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/155053/en-us)

A check for whether this is so:
[Assuming you have no FDD]
Is by booting an alternative "System Disk" to take you into Windows.
Make and boot from this XP boot CD [rather than a floppy] made by Paul Komski using his ISO file presented for download here. (http://www.paulski.com/bootcds/bootxp.iso)
I believe it presents you with a choice of a total of 8 partitions; choose the one you think holds the "Windows" folder [normally the 1st partition on the 1st physical HDD].

If that takes you into Windows, then you know the problem is with the boot files on the Windows [C:?] partition.
You can then work within Windows to fix those.

If the above fails to take you into Windows, then the problem is with the later loading of other Windows files.

[ComputerQuestio]

Thanks mjc and Sylvander. I put in a factory default CD for Windows XP for Acer in my CD-ROM and it booted from there. Unfortunately, before I saw the black screen error solution from Sylvander, I just completely reinstalled Windows so that I could get it working again. So I'm really glad that it wasn't a hardware thing, but rather Windows. I guess next time, if it does happen again, I'll know how to get in and possibly saving a lot of my stuff without having to completely reinstall it. Luckily I'm only 4 months behind, since I made a mirror image from 4 months ago on my 500 GB external. Instead of completely reinstalling everything, I'm just going to use the external hard drive's files to build up what I had before from scratch.

I noticed that my laptop still will sometimes overheat and turn off still. I probably should have the fan checked out or something.

[Sarath]

I had a similar problem with my HP DV 6000 just 10 months old.The support guy told me on the phone to update the BIOS and its fine now.

Good luck:)

[djhusi]

I'm not sure whether this will help or not but the exact same thing happened to one of the thinkpads at my workplace, and it was because we accidentally unplugged it while it was connected to a projector. After rebooting we only saw a black screen and even the bios only showed up on the projected image. So next time you could try hooking up an external monitor or something.

[Paul Komski]

A general point to take on board.

When data recovery is the pre-eminent issue the last thing to do is to attempt any repairs or reinstalls or boot-ups or scandisk repairs etc until data recovery softare has been run on the hard drive attached to another PC as a slave or in an enclosure or unless it has been possible to clone every sector on the drive to another drive using software such as dd_rescue.