Dear Calguns Techies....please help

[45R]

Man I am running in uncharter waters here in terms of getting my laptop running.

I am running a Dell 1720 (Windows Vista) laptop. Friday when I went to turn on my laptop, I received an error asking to restart the PC. I restarted and it blue screened and immediately after the blue screen it restarted again. It then asked for a "repair" option using the supplied Windows disk. I tried rebooting in safe mode. Same blue screen and immediate reboot.

At that point I used the repair feature. Upon rebooting after the "repair" I received the "Black Sceen of Death". The laptop would only show a black screen after booting up and go any further. The mouse arrow is available and I can move that sucker all along the screen but no menu options are available. Just a black screen. I pulled out the HDD and tried retrieving the info on a Windows 7 PC. It could not read the drive. I tried on a XP machine and was successful in retrieving all data.

The drive was then formatted and OS was reinstalled. After reinstallation of the OS I am running into the same Black Screen of Death. Safe Mode freezes.

I am running into uncharted waters.....................

Any help would really be appreciated.

[xmustanguyx]

From the sound of it you have hardware issues. Try swapping in known known good memory or if it has 2 swap them out one at a time. Try removing battery and using only the A/C power. Load a live CD and take out the hard drive, see if you can run the live CD without problems. Try running live CD with and without hard drive attached...That's where I would start. Also check to see fans are working, do this by starting up and going into the BIOS for a few minutes. The fans should kick on after a bit and let you know they are good.

[45R]

Fan = Good (Can hear that humming right now)
Memory= Good to go (checked that yesterday)
Tried moving battery yesterday and it ran fine on AC power

What do you mean by live CD?

[xmustanguyx]

A Linux Live CD as sometimes they are called is an operating system that can be run from the CD by itself without the use of any hard drive. It's useful for seeing if your hardware can run without having the hard drive or OS installed.

http://www.livecdlist.com/

I like the Knoppix one...

http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html

BTW, they are free too.

[45R]

Downloading Knopper now. I'll give it a shot and see what happens.

Thanks!

[freonr22]

JUST HAD THIS 4 DAYS AGO!!!!! bootloader.exe was missing/corrupt... tried an online solution rewriting bcdedit.exe stuff. not for the faint of heart. did a paid call with microsoft (ASK FOR A LEVEL 2 OR 3tech) the level one, after 2 hours, ended up doing a custom reinstall which means i lost all my programs. the data is still there but its gonna be @$!Y#@%Y%Y$%$^$@%YT$%@#!@ to deal with now. I spent 3 hrs w/ the phillipines, and 3 hrs w/ India over 2 days.....

[freonr22]

http://www.google.com/search?q=bcdedit&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a#q=vista+loads+to+black+screen&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=aG2&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&prmdo=1&tbs=dsc:1,qdr:m&prmd=ivnsfd&source=lnt&sa=X&ei=s2KYTbauEuvYiAKBmKXgCA&ved=0CAoQpwUoBA&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=c99decee79d1fe4a

[45R]

A Linux Live CD as sometimes they are called is an operating system that can be run from the CD by itself without the use of any hard drive. It's useful for seeing if your hardware can run without having the hard drive or OS installed.

http://www.livecdlist.com/

I like the Knoppix one...

http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html

BTW, they are free too.

Laptop is running perfect from Live Disc and no HDD installed. Looks like an afternoon trip to Frys electronics this weekend. Thanks for getting me a step further. I'll keep you guys posted. I am running Ubuntu. I tried Knoppix but it was in German and I can only read English

[45R]

Update. New HDD, New RAM and the computer is still hanging up on install. It gets to Completing installation then goes to the cursor with black screen..........

[bbguns44]

So it runs fine with LiveCD but not with new HD. Maybe it's the HD controller.
How about an external USB drive or flash drive ?

[45R]

So it runs fine with LiveCD but not with new HD. Maybe it's the HD controller.
How about an external USB drive or flash drive ?

You know I was thinking it was the HDD controller as well. Then I decided to try uploading another OS (Windows 7) and everything worked perfect.

I am back online with my 1720.

That Silly Black Screen of Death of frustrating. Missed a weekend of shooting to deal with this PC but its back up and running.

Thanks everyone for your help!

[ironcross]

Whats the error code?

[ironcross]

Update. New HDD, New RAM and the computer is still hanging up on install. It gets to Completing installation then goes to the cursor with black screen..........

I've had that problem with a failing hard drive.

[45R]

Whats the error code?

I wish I knew what the error code was. When the blue screen of death showed up the first time, it cycled to a reboot before I could even read the error.

Interesting thing is that since my Vista installed kept locking up, I said WTH and decided to use Windows 7. The install went super smooth and took about 1 hour. No lock ups, everything worked perfect. I guess it was just time for a few OS.

The original HDD is sitting in an enclosure. I ran it on 3 different computers and it seems to be working fine. ( I don't trust it though).

[Corbin Dallas]

Reset your BIOS to factory defaults.