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laptop screen has gone black

B

boing

Senior member
My dad's laptop (dell inspiron 6000, win xp sp3) recently had a BSOD and upon startup will not display any desktop. I have tried starting normally and in safe mode and in both cases all I can see is a black screen with the mouse pointer in the middle.

At a push I can use the recovery partition to re-set everything but it's going to mean a lot of hassle and lost e-mail info etc so if possible I'd rather avoid it.

any ideas?
 
First thing to try is connect to an external monitor to see if you get a video signal and eliminate or confirm the possibility the display has failed. If you had the error code from the bsod that could help also. If you do get a signal to an external monitor try a memtest.
 
I might bring it over to my place and try that but it's showing the 'safe mode' loading screen and showing 'safe mode' in the corners of the screen as well as the mouse pointer which would indicate it's not a video feed issue.
 
The first thing that I would do is to boot to a Linux liveCD and copy all your important data to a USB storage device. Then do a repair install (you should be able to find an XP SP3 OEM CD somewhere).
 
I've never worked with linux unfortunately, I do have a win7 DVD though do you think I could boot from that and retrieve my data?
 
Last edited:
Using a live linux would be easier than working through the command prompt, which is probably what you'd have to do with the win7 disk.

Use unetbootin to make a bootable USB drive (it will even download your choice of OS), and just do that.
 
thetuna said:
Using a live linux would be easier than working through the command prompt, which is probably what you'd have to do with the win7 disk.

Use unetbootin to make a bootable USB drive (it will even download your choice of OS), and just do that.
Click to expand...

:thumbsup: If you can figure out Windows, you can figure out GNOME (the most common Linux desktop environment).
 
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