[RESOLVED] BIOS ? Booting Problem !

[TechFobe]

Hi Folks,
Looking at a laptop which just boots up to a black screen with the mouse button showing in the centre and nothing else

Looked at a slightly similar problem on the XP forum but I've tried most of the suggestions to no avail ... I have a specific question which hopefully someone can answer.

Laptop > Acer Aspire 6930z

The person was using the laptop and I think got corrupted by a virus?

Unable to boot into safe mode or any of the other f8 options...defaulted bios settings to factory default...'no joy'.

Ran a copy of the AVG Rescue CD which found no problem.

Puppy Linux failed on starting up from a boot cd ....unable to boot from an xp boot cd.

Went through the process of booting the system as if to re-image only to see what was there and there's 3 partitions, a small acer, a system partition and a data partition.

Booted with a hiren boot cd and the drives and the data seems intact.

While using the hiren boot cd as I was to get some bsod messages and as
a result I've downloaded a fix which does the following: 'enabling the disk driver in windows before changing the sata/raid mode'

My query is this: When building a new iso to accommodate the ms fix do I leave the installer intact or does one uninstall the package first and then add whats uninstalled into the iso? Unsure quite what happens if and when the file is run in the bootable live cd environment?

Obviously I could just bash away but I because its not my laptop and I'm
unable to get at the data to offload it beforehand as I've tried to boot using
acronis to offload the data to a portable hard drive which also failed I'm taking a more cautious approach.

Any feedback is appreciated ... Thanks for taking the time to read this far ^_^ TF.

[dneilson]

Do you get the POST?
Reset the BIOS with the jumper or by removing the battery?
Tried a new BIOS battery?

[TechFobe]

A new battery hasn't been tried although I did unplug the battery pack and try booting without it that made no difference.

When booted the system boots up with the acer logo and then tries loading windows and then the screen just stays blank.

Guess I could try a bios firmware update which is another option.

Also I'm unable to use the acer built in system recovery tool as it falls over via the recovery

Irritatingly the system doesn't error, blue screen, doesn't even doing anything exhaustive like working the cpu and fan....just a black screen with the mouse cursor

[jdc2000]

That is beginning to sound like a hardware issue, especially if you cannot boot from a Windows CD. If that is a laptop with a SATA drive, the default BIOS setting should be whatever is needed to install Windows (even XP) without additional SATA drivers, especially if it does not have a floppy drive. It looks like that system has a recovery partition on the hard drive, but if you can't access it, it won't do you much good. Check the BIOS settings again and let us know what options you have for the SATA controller, if any.

Links:

http://www.ehow.com/how_6534303_rest...6930-disk.html

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&s...52l520l1.1.1l3

[dneilson]

Might want to run the hard drive Manufacturers Diagnostics.

[TechFobe]

Thanks for the comments

Resetting BIOS to default settings changes the disk type to AHCI or similar.

I'll confirm this once home this evening and I'll certainly run the manufacturers
diags as he's left a couple of cd's that came with the laptop in the case.

Update you with the results later and thanks again

[TechFobe]

Hi Folks ... Ran a hard drive diagnostics test using HD TUNE ... which appeared to be running fine and then after maybe 15 - 20 minutes reported 'critical hard disk temperature 60c' ... The fan wasn't noisy or anything like that ... The contrary in fact it was dead quiet....From this critical message is the assumption that the drive is almost dead or is it possible that the fan may be at fault and replacing it may resolve the issue?

Even though the prognosis isn't good, headway is being made so thanks

[dneilson]

The fan may be "dead quiet" 'cause it's dead. If you can get inside you can check that. You could try jacking up the thing pretty high on some books (or something) so there's plenty of space under it and blowing a desk fan up close and personal to carry some heat away and see if there's any change.

[Train]

Yes, open the case and make sure all the fans are working.

[TechFobe]

Thanks for the tip on the fan .... I'll try it tonight and let you know

[TechFobe]

Hi Folks ... Just remembered that I still had this call opened and figured I should close.

Eventually managed to get the users data off the machine and do a complete install and
copy the data back...The problem appears to related to the 'black screen of death' syndrome which seems to have been an issue prominent with vista with various solutions and probably causes...In truth I tried some half a dozen or more apart from the suggestions in this posting to no avail but I'm happy and so is the user that the laptop appears to have returned to good health so just wanted to thank folks for there input.

Quite sure there'll be another somewhere done the line and I'm sure some positive thoughts will come from the folks on these boards.

Keep well