Black screen right after bios.

[wortdog]

Black screen after bios info screen

I have Vista Ulimate 64-bit and everytime that I reboot I get a black screen before the Microsoft Windows scrolling bar.

This is the sequence.
- I reboot.
- I get my bios information screen.
- I get the white, blinking line in the upper left corner of the screen.
- Then the screen goes black with no hard drive activity.

I then can perform a Complete PC restore from my second partition on the same SATA Hard Drive and I will then be able to boot into Vista with no problem.....until I reboot, then I get the Black screen again. It is a vicious cycle.

I have tried to remove video cards (2 x 8800 GTS), memory (4 GB), sound cards (X-Fi Music), load the default bios settings....nothing works. Only a Complete PC Restore cures it, but only until I need to reboot the PC.

Any help would be welcome.

 

[Shao128]

Just a guess here, but to me it sounds like a boot loader or boot device order issue. How long have you left it on the blinking cursor before giving up?

As well I'm assuming if you have your Vista DVD in the drive it boots up fine?

 

[wortdog]

The blinking cursor is on the screen for maybe 3-5 seconds, then the whole screen goes black.

If I have the Vista DVD in the drive I can boot fine to it.

I might look at my boot priority sequence and see if that helps.

 

[Shao128]

Ya checking the boot order would be a good start, and also verify the boot loader (bootmgr) is on the correct drive.

 

[wortdog]

I just tried changing my boot sequence.

It was on Floppy, CD-ROM, Hard Drive. I changed it to Hard Drive, CD-ROM.

I still got the black screen after the change.


I still seems odd that a complete system restore will let me boot into Vista fine, but if I do a simple reboot after the restore (changing nothing) it brings me back to the black screen.

 

[Shao128]

If you leave the Vista DVD in the drive and try to boot, and dont press a button to boot from the DVD what happens?

 

[wortdog]

I just tried that....nothing. Black Screen.

 

[Shao128]

Hrmm ok, how many drives do you have in your machine? Do you have any IDE drives?

 

[wortdog]

I have just one SATA Hard Drive with 2 partitions on it. I also have tried to move the HD to different ports on my MOBO....didn't help.

 

[Shao128]

Ok well, couple more things to try, if you leave it on the black screen for a couple minutes does anything happen? As well when you do get it to boot, where is the bootmgr file located?

 

[wortdog]

I have left it on the black screen for about 10-15 minutes....nothing.

I will restore my system overnight and check the bootmgr location. I assume that it should be on the C drive, correct?

 

[Shao128]

Ideally, yes.

 

[wortdog]

As a side note, I tried the Startup Repair recovery tool on the Vista DVD and it didn't find any problems.

I will check the bootmgr in the morning and post back here what I found. As with all of the weird PC issues that I have....it is always something small that causes it.

 

[Shao128]

I had a similar issue when I was building my PC, for some reason the bootmgr was getting installed on one of my IDE drives instead of my SATA, the solution for mine was to disconnect all drives except my primary SATA and do a repair, then replug all the other drives in.

 

[wortdog]

I looked under my System icon in Control Panel, then clicked on Advanced System Settings. Then clicked on the advanced tab. Then clicked on the Settings button for the Startup and Recovery section. Everything in here looks OK.

Is this where I am supposed to look for the bootmgr in Vista?

 

[Shao128]

You can check in explorer, it should be in the root directory of the drive. Just ensure you have explorer set to show system and hidden files.

 

[SCSIraidGURU]

Did you check your BIOS boot order? Did you reinstall and not point to the correct drives?

 

[wortdog]

You can check in explorer, it should be in the root directory of the drive. Just ensure you have explorer set to show system and hidden files.

I will check that when I get home tonight.

 

[wortdog]

Did you check your BIOS boot order? Did you reinstall and not point to the correct drives?

I currently have my boot order as this: Hard Drive, CD-ROM

And I did install Vista to the C drive.

 

[wortdog]

Oddly enough, I read on another forum that someone was having a similar problem and they found out that the USB mouse was causing Vista not to boot up. They unplugged the USB mouse and it booted up fine.

Which is funny, because I then remembered I had the same issue will my USB Razor mouse a while ago. I had to unplug it whenever I reboot, then plug it back in once in Windows.

However, I currently have a Logitech G5 mouse. Either way, I will try this USB mouse solution tonight as well.