Black Screen After Logo

When I turn the computer on, everything runs fine until the Windows XP Pro logo disappears. Then I get a black screen, hardly any disk activity, but the mouse cursor still works.

The basic specs are:
512 MB Memory
AMD Athlon

I can't get to the desktop to check further. I have tried swapping the video card out for a less powerful one, but I get the same result. I've read other forums that suggest a new power supply or a motherboard swap.

Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated!

~S

 

Can you boot from your XP CD and get a screen?

 

I can boot from the WIN XP CD, because I wanted to try the recovery console, but I've never really used it before. Even in Safe Mode, I get the "Safe Mode" words on the 4 corners of the screen, and a working mouse cursor, but a completely black screen.

 

Boot from the CD to recovery console and from the prompt, do

Code:

chkdsk x: /r

where "x" means do it for each hard drive/partition on your system. It does a full scan including surface so may take a while.

I'm not confident that will cure things although it may. If not, you are pretty much left with trying a repair install. It might fix you up and usually won't cause further damage although it can.

If you have data you need and it isn't backed up somewhere, you might be safer to do a basic install of XP to another partition (if available) so you can back up your data before trying the repair install of your main OS load. You can always remove the new, basic one later.