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Problems with Computer. Has Windows XP 3

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Gwithfire

Technical User
Sep 15, 2004
9
US
Hi everyone,

I'm trying to help my friend but am now at a loss. Her computer was freezing on her, so she kept restarting it until the power button broke into pieces. Just telling you what she told me :0 She finally got it to at least start but now says when it starts up all she gets is a black screen with all kinds of numbers on it. I was trying to help her go into safe mode so she could maybe do a system restore, but she can't get past this black screen. Any suggestions? She doesn't have a boot disk on a floppy and only has the restore CD's that came with her computer which is around a year old now.
 
Sounds like a bad video card. In what way is the power switch broken (some "switches" are just a physical link to the real switch)?
 
what she tells me is she puts in pinky finger inside where the power switch is which turns the computer on.
 
It could be that the HD has gone bad and the 'black screen with numbers' is the summary of system information which appears just before the 'Verifying DMI pool data....'

I've had a few recently with corrupt disks and bad MBR's that stop at this point.
 
my friend finally got into safe mode and it gave 2 options which one was optimal default performance and the other is Fail safe option. I told her to pick the Fail Safe Option and when she did her monitor screen went completely black, yet her monitor light is still lit green. Any ideas why this might have happened unless as you say it very well could be her hard drive.
 
Well sounds like you got her into the BIOS setup, not safemode...

she needs to go back into the BIOS and there look for the option of switching betweeb the AGP or PCI bootup graphics option... and switch to the other...







Ben

If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer...
 
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