W7 64 bit black screen of death

[rocks911]

This is entirely my fault and I should be slapped for being so dumb, but I got impatient with a flash drive that hangs. I have a Rosehill USB 3.0 card installed on the W7 64 bit PC and have a USB hub run from the card.
I was transferring a video to a flash drive inserted into the hub and it was taking forever, the time remaining indicated 3 hours...well I was hoping to do the transfer quickly as I needed to get to work...as no progress was being made I clicked on cancel and it hung there for a while and finally I just pulled the stick from the hub.
That might have been a bad mistake because the screen immediately went black and rebooting brought me around to the same black screen. Nothing comes up, I mean nothing. The PC is running when I reboot but there is nothing on the screen.
Is there a way into the OS other than an old rescue disk I have?

 

[alvine]

you can try pressing f8 and boot in safe mode with networking

 

[rocks911]

I'll give that a shot when I get home, but I have to wonder...I have never gotten a black screen without anything displayed, at least a blinking cursor. What I have now is a completely blank black screen, no nothing...Rats!

 

[rocks911]

F8 did nothing for me. I started the pc and it makes all the right noises, but there is nothing on the screen. F8 produced no results and neither did f10.
The monitor immediately goes to blinking as if there is no signal. I ran the monitor lead to the inboard video rather than the video card and there is no difference.
I inserted a windows repair disk and restarted the pc but it never spun up in the drive.
I have no idea how to proceed

 

[rocks911]

I don't suppose I can really call this a bsod issue because there is no display. I have switched the cable running to the monitor from my video card to my onboard video and the monitor attempts to find a signal and eventually indicates to "check signal cable" because obviously its not receiving a signal.

So no display with either the video card or the onboard video. I just can't wrap my head around this, pull a USB flash drive after canceling a file transfer and immediately the screen goes blank and I can't seem to figure out how to recover from this.

Ideas would be greatly apprecaited

 

[rocks911]

So I pulled the power cord from my tower and took the dogs for a walk, came back plugged it in with my Windows 7 recovery disk in the drive, and I'm currently in safe mode.

I have arrived at a "system recovery options" screen, I selected "system restore" and I got a pop up message indicating "to use system restore, you must specify which windows installation to restore. Restart this computer, select an operating system, and then select system restore".

So apparently it can't see my OS?

I'm nervous about doing anything further...

What is recommended?

 

[rocks911]

Got it back to working. Thanks to those who took the time to respond.

 

[jesse977s]

Got it back to working. Thanks to those who took the time to respond.

How did you get it to work? I've the same issue, with the same cause.

 

[rocks911]

Got it back to working. Thanks to those who took the time to respond.

How did you get it to work? I've the same issue, with the same cause.

Just as I stated, I had tried everything and nothing was working, so I unplugged the PC from the wall and went for a walk, when I came back I plugged it in and when it booted up I was able to boot into safe mode.

The key was to unplug it for 15-20 minutes. The boot order was all wrong, somehow the boot order was changed and it never even tried to access the HDD group. I got into DOS at startup and changed the boot order and everything was back to normal. I dont know how it happened or what made it mess up but the problem that needed fixing was the boot order, it couldnt find my OS because it was booting from my CD/DVD drive.

Good luck, reply if you're still stuck, I'm no expert but I'll share all I can.

 

[thenaysh]

How did you change the boot order? I have the same issue, though I do see the cursor. But I can't boot it in safe mode or safe mode with networking. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

 

[rocks911]

How did you change the boot order? I have the same issue, though I do see the cursor. But I can't boot it in safe mode or safe mode with networking. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

You must enter BIOS. This is done during the startup of your computer. As your computer starts up you simply press the correct key, typically F1 or F2, or F8 and you will eventually see a black (or blue) screen with white text, this is bios (this is not your operating system, this is the basic program that operates your computer from the motherboard and from here you direct what the computer is supposed to do at startup) Typically what you do is start with your P.C. off. Turn your P.C. on and at the same time press the correct "F" button, most people just continue to tap tap tap the F button until it goes into BIOS.

Once in bios look at the topics across the top of the screen (Main/ Advanced/ Power/ Boot/Security/ Exit) and use the arrows on your keyboard to navigate over to Boot. Once at boot hit enter. You boot options are then displayed. there will be a line that says something like "first boot device" and this is what we are looking for, it should read HDD group (if you have multiple hard drives) or just HDD if you have a single hard drive. Make sure the hard drive or HDD is selected.

All of your navigation in BIOS is accomplished with the keyboard arrows, the Enter button and the Esc button. Dont be afraid to navigate around you wont really hurt much, your P.C. might just not work right....but we're already at that point right?

So heres what this looks like...start the P.C. while tap tap tapping the correct F key (F1-F12 whichever is right for your P.C.) when the black or blue screen appears use your keyboard arrows to move the highlighted area over to Boot. Once at Boot hit the enter key. A menu of boot devices is shown, make sure the 1st boot device is HDD. If the first Boot device is not HDD hit the enter button while the highlighted area is at 1st boot device to get to a menu where you can select the boot device. Scroll to HDD and hit enter. Once you have set the HDD as the first Boot device Esc out of BIOS.

Restart P.C. and it should Boot into your Operating System. If it does not, go back through this process and try again.

What you are doing is trying to tell your computer where to look for the operating system. Thats really all there is to it, you cant really break much...you're just trying to tell your P.C. where to look for the O.S. and telling it to start there.

This shows what the process looks like:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDwIudeYrJ0

 

[thenaysh]

Thanks very much for the thorough explanation Rocks, I appreciate it very much. I did exactly that but HDD was already selected as the first boot option. I changed it again just so I could go back to it to see if somehow that triggers the system into booting properly but nothing yet.

Guess I'd continue to research and take it to MS store if I have to.

Thanks again!