I wonder if anyone can assist with this problem.

When I try to start up all I get is a black screen with a cursor blinking in the top right hand corner. Can anyone tell me whats going on.

Thanks
Llewitha

Go into bios onv your computer first and see if hardrive is detected. If so go into boot order and make sure hardrive is first on boot order.

Sounds like you had power dip or power failure. Is this the case?

Update to above post

This seems to be an intermittent situation.
After a few attempts it started went through the usual start up procedure worked for about ten minutes then just switched itself off.

Any ideas anyone I really don't know where to start.
Thanks
Llewitha

Reply to Rokytnji

Thanks for the reply, I can't get into the Bios or anything at all but if you saw my update you'll see that I can get in after a few attempts so I'll try that now and make sure hard drive is the first boot device.

Llewitha

O.K. after 4 or 5 attempts at restarting I managed to get into the Bios.

I checked the boot sequence and the first bootable device is harddrive. I then came out of the Bios and it failed to start up, it went straight to the blank screen with the cursor flashing.

I shut it off then started again and this time it started up!

Something is still wrong as the mouse is jerky and its slow.

Btw this machine has been working fine for close to two years until all of a sudden this is happening.

The machine is a desk top with a PC Chips motherboard P23G with Pentium D Processors and 2gig Ram. Nvidia 6200 AGP graphics card and sound blaster audigy sound card.

Llewitha

Sounds Like Your Hardrive is starting to go on the Fritz. I would try to back up whatever is important to you in the 10 minutes you can keep it running to USB flash or External Hardrive.

Then you can test/check hardrive with either

Ultimate Boot CD - Download the UBCD

or with hardrive tester from manufacturers site. Depending on who made your hardrive.

A cheap can of compressed air and trying to blow out dust bunnies in laptop is another step you could try. Being a laptop though, Choices are limited on how well you can clean out the inside of heat trapping dust.

Edit: It is early here and I just woke up. Reread that it is a Desktop so pull a panel and use the can of air to give your Desktop a good Cleaning first before you try anything else.

You aren't running the free trial version of Windows 7 by any chance are you?

It has a built in shutdown mechanism.

Update
Sorry that I've been a little while in geting back but its taken me a bit of time to get something to report.

First I'm not running a trial version of Windows 7 I'm running XP Pro.
I have three hard drives the boot drive is a SATA and then two IDE drives on as master the other as slave. I disconnected and removed everything i.e. the hard drives and all PCI cards then connected each of the IDE drives. The machine didn't boot of course Iwanted to just see if the Bios would detect them. It did but interestingly I was occassionally getting the same problem immediately after start up I would just get the black screen with the cursor flashing in the top right hand corner. After a few attempts it worked and the Bios saw them.

I then connected the SATA drive and again I was having the problem but eventually got it to boot.
I then downloaded UBCD have run the Hard Drive diagnostics. All the tests passed!
At the moment I am running Mem Test 86. I think this is going to take some time but that at least is my current position.

Perhaps there is Something that you guys can have a think about?

Thanks
Llewitha
Thanks

First off, do you get any beeps when it boots up? Have you tried disconnecting and reconnecting everything? Have you tried using just 1 drive?

You had no problems running UBCD? No shutdowns while checking Drives?

I am wondering if your cmos battery is any good any more because it is tied in with bios.
If ram or Mother board or power supply was failing. Then you would have had problems with running UBCD which just runs off the cd disk as a live ISO. Memtest takes some time also so if a heat issue or hardware failure it will shutdown while running. That is why I suspect the cmos battery. Problem only occurs during boot and affects getting into bios also.

After a few attempts it worked and the Bios saw them.