need help black screen, blinking cursor

[gailr]

Hi I just got this laptop from my granddaughter. It's a dell inspiron 2500.
thats about all I know at the time. And can't get it to work.
all I get is a black screen with blinking cursor. And she has no, reboot disk are any thing with it. to where i can try and reinstall windows.

is there anyway I can get a replacement disk somewhere on the net? she has misplace all the disk and things that came with it. And has no, ideal where it all is. And I want to fix it. Can someone help me? :sad:

What maybe could this problem be? And by reinstalling windows will it help?
Oh, it has windows XP, installed now home editions. she said it was working just a few months back and this went wrong and she just never did anything with it.

And when it comes to computers I'm lost lol. I would appreciate any help.
thanks. :-)

[geeksRus]

when you turn on the computer do you get anything at all before you get the black screen? any messages or prompts? have you tried to start it with a bootdisk (if you have a floppy drive) or with a Win98 or Win 2000 CD? a little more info if you can.

[gailr]

Yes, I get the dell screen then it goes black and has the cursor in the left hand conner. I have no disk at all for it. I do have a dell desktop, my home computer. And have the dell disk and the boot disk and all that came with mine.
mine is a dell dimension 8200 desktop. But that want work will it?

[gailr]

I can hit the F2, key and go into a screen called "Phoenix BIOS Setup Utility".
But I don't know where to go from there. at the bottom of the dell screen it has press F2 to start setup...if that helps any at all.

[gailr]

I can hit the F2, key and go into a screen called "Phoenix BIOS Setup Utility".
But I don't know where to go from there.

I don't have a windows 98 or 2000 boot disk is there maybe a place I can download one from the Internet?

[geeksRus]

you can get a bootdisk for just about any operating system from Bootdisk (http://bootdisk.com)

in the meantime try the steps listed below:
1. Remove the battery and AC power from the system.
2. Press and hold the power button for 10-15 seconds.
3. Reattach the AC adapter to the system.
4. Power the system on.

[gailr]

you can get a bootdisk for just about any operating system from Bootdisk (http://bootdisk.com)

in the meantime try the steps listed below:
1. Remove the battery and AC power from the system.
2. Press and hold the power button for 10-15 seconds.
3. Reattach the AC adapter to the system.
4. Power the system on.

I'll try that thanks so much hope it works. if not I will go to the bootdisk web site and see if I can get a reboot disk there, see if that helps. Thanks :thumbs:

[gailr]

sorry, but where do I remove the battery? where is it, on the bottom of the system?

[gailr]

ok i found the battery, :-)

[geeksRus]

i knew you would...

[gailr]

did all that and it didn't fix it. So what do I do now? help please.I looked on the site to find a file to download. But didn't know which one to do.
So where do I get a bookable CD are floppy to get this thing up and going?

could you point me in the right place and link to what I did to download, and what do I save it to A: drive floppy? are can I do one to CD-rom drive and boot it that way? Sorry to be so much of a bother. But I'm new at all this.

And need your help. thanks :thumbs2:

[Mayet]

If you can get into bios try setting it to default load settings

Make sure the boot sequence is set to cd rom first and hard drive second.

[gailr]

Can I get replaceable, disk for the system. she has lost all disk and papers to it.
But someone has peeled off the windows service tag on the bottom. So is it worth messing with?

[geeksRus]

you could contact Dell and maybe get a set of restore disks. but then again you could purchase Windows XP and install it yourself. the first thing to do tho is to create a boot floppy (if the notebook has a floppy drive)...it duznt matter what operating system you use to create it. a good old win98 boot floppy will do. or if you have an original win98 or winxp cd you can try to boot with that. do what Mayet said and set the boot order(boot sequence) in the BIOS to boot from CD first. see if the system will start from the CD or the floppy.

[gailr]

Ok this is what happens, I had an old win98 disk and put it in and it did start to boot. well it goes through this stage of going as far as saying "preparing to start your com this may take a few minutes please wait". then it comes up to say to get help, type HELP and press ENTER it has A:\>and cursor flashing . And I do that then it just goes into the D:\README. TXT and then that's as far as it goes. So where do I go from there? all I have now is a blue screen.

[geeksRus]

now we are getting somewhere. you have successfully booted the machine. now we need to see if the computer and operating system recognizes that the hard drive is there...it most likely does. instead of typeing HELP type
'FDISK /STATUS' (without the quotes of course) and press enter. post the results. and be thinking about what operating system you want to install.

[gailr]

OK this is what came up... fixed disk drive status disk" reading drive E Abort,Retry,Fail?
Disk 1
Drv
C: 2045
Mbytes
4105
Free
Usage
100%

{1 MByte= 1048576 bytes} then it gives me the

A:\> again with cursor blinking

[geeksRus]

it looks as tho the hard drive is ok...since you dont have the disks that came with the system i guess its up to you now to decide what operating system you want to put on it. since it had xp on it before i guess you could go that route.

[gailr]

it looks as tho the hard drive is ok...since you dont have the disks that came with the system i guess its up to you now to decide what operating system you want to put on it. since it had xp on it before i guess you could go that route.


I did try and put the windows xp disk that I have in there and reinstall and it want even start it up it still just comes back to a black screen and don't try and load the CD I put in there. so now what could be my problem?

I want to put back the XP but it want let me do anything. I take the floppy disk out and put in the windows xp disk and it just goes to that black screen again with cursor blinking.

[geeksRus]

did you go into the BIOS and set the boot sequence/boot order to be CD-ROM first? you have to set the machine to boot from the CD. when you restart the machine you may see a message that says 'Press any key to boot from CD...' if you do then press a key when you see it. the most important thing to do tho is to set the computer to boot from the CD instead of the hard drive. you may have to look around in the BIOS to find where to change the boot order. don't worry, you wont mess anything up if you only change the boot order.

[Mayet]

Is Ok my replies are invisible again :D :D

[confus-ed]

did you go into the BIOS and set the boot sequence/boot order to be CD-ROM first? ...

At the risk of confusing matters .. this machine just started up 'fine' from "an old win98 disk" - so that'd kind of rule that out ;) ..however if you go look at Dell's site for this model, you can find a bios update which might maybe help get xp to install ? ( I found that by starting here (http://support.euro.dell.com/uk/en/index.asp?segment=DHS&rlevel=5&referrer=%2Fuk%2Fen%2Ffixmydell%2Easp&showreg=1) & picking 'inspirion 2500' from the drop down box)

[gailr]

At the risk of confusing matters .. this machine just started up 'fine' from "an old win98 disk" - so that'd kind of rule that out ;) ..however if you go look at Dell's site for this model, you can find a bios update which might maybe help get xp to install ? ( I found that by starting here (http://support.euro.dell.com/uk/en/index.asp?segment=DHS&rlevel=5&referrer=%2Fuk%2Fen%2Ffixmydell%2Easp&showreg=1) & picking 'inspirion 2500' from the drop down box)

Thanks for the info, I went there and can't seem to get the page to load for me. when i click on my model it will not bring it up. it comes up to say this page can not be found. I will try again. all this is driving me nuts. :rolleyes:
I don't know much about all this as you can tell. I'm not good with computers.

[geeksRus]

Is Ok my replies are invisible again :D :D
i referenced your post...was glad for the help.

[gailr]

i referenced your post...was glad for the help.

Thanks Mayet, for your help I appreciate it much. sorry I'm just so confussed this thing driving me crazy ha.

[gailr]

Is Ok my replies are invisible again :D :D

Can you tell me how to go into BIOS and set the boot sequence/boot order to be CD-ROM?

[geeksRus]

in the BIOS the boot order screen should look like this:
http://gstorm.cjb.cc/boot.jpg

use the + and - keys to move the cd to the top of the list. exit and save changes. now you should be able to insert the win xp cd and boot from it.

[gailr]

Ok I did that and where it has the
+ Removable divice
+ Hard Drive
+ CD ROM Drive

there's no + by the CD- ROM drive so could that have something to do with it?
what does that mean? I go down and highlite the CD-ROM Drive and save.
But it still want boot from CD-ROM drive.

[geeksRus]

when you say you hilite the cd-rom and save do you move the cd to the top of the list first? you need to do that. use the + key to move the cd to the top after you hilite it. then save and exit.

[gailr]

thank you thank you...haha we got it going now. Thanks to you. :-)

[geeksRus]

i know it was a long way to go and someone else mite have been quicker...glad its goin now.

[gailr]

Yes, at one time I wanted to just give up ha. But I knew it was a way to fixed it just had to get someone that knew what they were doing. Thanks so much for you trouble. [grin]

[Mayet]

Greatest

I was only kidding before by the way



Glad you got it going....................and i bet you learned heaps on the way too :D

[gailr]

oh yes,I learned lots ha..... thanks

[gailr]

I got it all working but, now the mouse want work. I hooked up a mouse that I had to it and it will work fine with it but the one on the system want work?
Is there something I can do that you know of to get it working?

And I don't know all the short cuts, to the keys to get where I want to go ha. guess I could go pick up one of the laptop mouses but when I'm traveling will be kind of hard to use it with the mouse attached.

I would rather use the built in one if at all possible. thanks

[geeksRus]

i think the driver you need is on the page below. the page also has instructions on installation.
Mouse Driver (http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/download.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=gen&releaseid=R35319&formatcnt=1&fileid=39364)

[jza734]

Sounds like the hdd in the system has some messed up os on it. You can use the dell restoration disk that came with your dimension on this machine. It will "work" however the legality of this is pretty shady. I know from experience that dell xp restore cd's don't ask for the product key ususally.

You simply need to wipe out whatever data is on the machine, reload, and install the drivers from support.dell.com

[geeksRus]

Sounds like the hdd in the system has some messed up os on it. You can use the dell restoration disk that came with your dimension on this machine. It will "work" however the legality of this is pretty shady. I know from experience that dell xp restore cd's don't ask for the product key ususally.

You simply need to wipe out whatever data is on the machine, reload, and install the drivers from support.dell.com
perhaps you should read the entire thread...

[jza734]

excuse me as i take foot out of mouth

[gailr]

Yes, I got it all working but the mouse, thanks to geeksRus and Mayet, for the help. Without them I would have not been able to do it. They coached me right through it. There GREAT!

I just hooked a notebook mouse up to it. I really don't like the built in mouse anyway. To hard for me to control. Thanks I really appreciate you'll help.