Calling all techies: Laptop help needed

[millidonk]

Have always been been fine with computers/laptops and if anything has gone wrong I have usually been able to fix it myself or use google to find a solution. Until now obv..

My problem:

Laptop loads fine, until i get to the login screen then the screen goes pitch black. No cursor, no anything, makes all the normal sounds, wifi turns on etc just can't see anything...

I have had this problem before and normally the turning off/holding power/taking battery out trick works..

So far I have tried:

• Turning off laptop, taking battery out, holding power button down, turning it upside down, turning on with power cable plugged in, holding the lid at different angles etc etc
• cant use ctrl/alt/del to run exploer.exe as their is nothing on the screen
• Fn F5/F8 which are used to toggle from screen to external monitor/tv
• Plugging in an external source to see if it comes up (which it doesnt)
• I made a recovery usb and tried loading off that and get the same problem.. am able to get in the bios etc, did a system restore, same thing happens, gets to the screen then pitch black! On the same recovery disc i am able to get to command prompt in which i did regedit where i loaded a MySYSTEM Hive and tried that solution.

All to no avail.

It is booting fine as i can type in my password and i hear it log in. The screen is working as i can enter bios etc and see the logo etc until i get to the login screen.

Has anyone got any ideas???

I have two older laptops, does anyone know if replacing the hard drive should get it too boot up? or if i bought a new one? I don't have any boot discs or Vista OS discs where i could do a complete reformat but wouldn't do this until i had backed up all my data anyway. Which will be a couple of days when my SATA hard drive encolsure arrives.


Sorry for the essay! Any help/solutions or ideas i could try would be massively appreciated.

[AndrewT]

You tried booting it in safe mode (hold down F8 during booting)?

[kinboshi]

What make is the laptop, and you're on Vista?

[Longines]

Maybe worth downloading a Linux LiveCD. Download this, burn it to CD, boot from CD.

[millidonk]

You tried booting it in safe mode (hold down F8 during booting)?

Yes mate, safe mode is exactly the same.

What make is the laptop, and you're on Vista?

Yes vista, some ppl refer to the problem as KSOD, black screen of death but they can normally get TM up or see a white mouse. i don't. It's a Acer Aspire 5738Z T4200

[kinboshi]

http://www.nuonsoft.com/blog/2009/05/02/possible-ksod-black-screen-of-death-solution-for-windows-vista/

[millidonk]

Maybe worth downloading a Linux LiveCD. Download this, burn it to CD, boot from CD.

Nice one. Never even heard of this OS. Looks good.  Downloading now. Will pay whatever the high st rip off merchants are charging for a 2gb usb stick at lunch, whack it on and try it out after work. Will use a dual boot until i have backed up all my data. Hope it works.

[millidonk]

http://www.nuonsoft.com/blog/2009/05/02/possible-ksod-black-screen-of-death-solution-for-windows-vista/

cheers bosh. Tried this last night and all i get is an annoying beep. A screen never pops up.

[kinboshi]

http://www.nuonsoft.com/blog/2009/05/02/possible-ksod-black-screen-of-death-solution-for-windows-vista/

cheers bosh. Tried this last night and all i get is an annoying beep. A screen never pops up.

Read the comments on there too.  They also mention booting up in Linux so you can edit the necessary windows files.  I've had to do this before to change an administrator password on a Windows machine.  Very useful trick.

[millidonk]

http://www.nuonsoft.com/blog/2009/05/02/possible-ksod-black-screen-of-death-solution-for-windows-vista/

cheers bosh. Tried this last night and all i get is an annoying beep. A screen never pops up.

Read the comments on there too.  They also mention booting up in Linux so you can edit the necessary windows files.  I've had to do this before to change an administrator password on a Windows machine.  Very useful trick.

Read through them, two of which i havent tried yet. Thats regedit and delete event logs and regedit, config, rename the software. I did the administrator and i think it was UAC permissions yesterday.

Thanks to everyone for all the help so far, will let ya know how i get on when i give it another go tonight.

[millidonk]

FML...

Update: Got in yesterday armed with my Ubuntu installation disc and a few other things to try, switch on the laptop and it does not recognise my hard drive!! Try rebooting several times to no avail. It says there is no hard drive installed so i can't install a new OS and i can't access regedit or anything...

I put a hard drive from an old laptop in and it boots fine, now i just need to get the latest drivers to get the Network adapters etc to work. This will save me for playing pokes etc, but obv the drive which is not being recognised had all my wedding vids, photos which is the only drive i own which i didn't have a back up of. Ahhhhhhhhh!

Have ordered an external casing for a 2.5' drive which i can attach to another computer by usb to see if it will be recognised that way in order for me to recover my data. Has anyone got any similiar experiences where it has come back to life or does it just sound like it is a goner? my last resort will be the freezer trick which has worked with other drives in the past. But it doesn't seem to be spinning up at all.

[Longines]

If all else fails http://www.retrodata.co.uk

Won't be cheap but they have an excellent reputation.

[millidonk]

If all else fails http://www.retrodata.co.uk

Won't be cheap but they have an excellent reputation.

if i can't sort it myself i will skip the freezer and send to these guys. They seem pretty good. Missus will have my bollocks off if i lose our wedding stuff. Gulp.

[Longines]

In similar circumstances in the past I've had success booting into Ubuntu and then accessing the apparently dead drive via a 2.5" USB enclosure - doign the same from Windows came up with nothing.


Good luck.