need help black screen, blinking cursor

**gailr** · June 25th, 2005, 11:29 PM

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?

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** · June 25th, 2005, 11:34 PM

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** · June 25th, 2005, 11:40 PM

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** · June 25th, 2005, 11:43 PM

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** · June 25th, 2005, 11:45 PM

Originally Posted by 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** · June 25th, 2005, 11:51 PM

you can get a bootdisk for just about any operating system from Bootdisk

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** · June 25th, 2005, 11:56 PM

Originally Posted by geeksRus

you can get a bootdisk for just about any operating system from Bootdisk

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

**gailr** · June 25th, 2005, 11:59 PM

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

**gailr** · June 26th, 2005, 12:04 AM

ok i found the battery, :-)

**geeksRus** · June 26th, 2005, 12:16 AM

i knew you would...

**gailr** · June 26th, 2005, 03:21 AM

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

**Mayet** · June 26th, 2005, 04:21 AM

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** · June 26th, 2005, 01:23 PM

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** · June 26th, 2005, 01:50 PM

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** · June 26th, 2005, 05:03 PM

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.