I mean that, when the sign-in screen comes up, and I enter my code, the little bunch of dots that circles (in place of the used-to-be hourglass) just whirls and whirls, then after 10 minutes or so, the screen goes black. I click on the screen, try again, circle whirls, screen goes black...ad infinitum.
As far as the bios version, it's whatever came with the computer. It's fairly new -- Windows 8, God bless me --
I'll try to come back from home where I have access to the exact model, etc.