Black screen

[narniafan]

Compaq Presario F700, Windows Vista. I've had the computer 18 mos. I think the warranty has expired.

I was in Microsoft Word when the screen froze. The mouse pad wouldn't work or anything. So I mistakenly hit a few buttons on the keyboard before finally turning it off. [Esc, ctrl+alt+delete] Then I discovered that it wouldn't go off, not really. It keeps going in and out in hibernation mode [I guess], every 20 to 30 seconds. It shows a black screen. I can't remember having this problem before. I may have once; I don't remember. But I don't remember what got it to work either, if I did have the problem. The screen has frozen before and I would just turn it off and turn it back on. And it would work. This time it doesn't. It's just a black screen, and turning off and on every 20-30 seconds. I turned it off completely once or twice and removed the battery and turned it back on. Still the same problem! Help! Is there some button I can push to make it work?

 

[aford10]

Turn the PC off. Turn it on, and tap f10 or f11 repeatedly. If you have a recovery partition, one of those keys should get you in.

 

[narniafan]

I tried that: turning off/on PC and tapping either f10 or f11. It didn't work. Nothing happens. More info: F4732NR. It doesn't make a noise when I pop out the CD-rom drive. Otherwise it does. And when I push ctrl-alt-delete it doesn't turn on/off. It just sits there. I can't get anything to happen.

 

[aford10]

Try pulling one RAM chip at a time.

 

[narniafan]

What does that mean?

 

[aford10]

That means open up the compartment on the bottom with the RAM in it. If you have 2 RAM chips, remove 1 and then try booting up. If no luck, put it back in, remove the other, and try booting up. If no luck, try them the opposite slots 1 at a time.

 

[narniafan]

Okay...

Here's my problem: http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c01534678&tmp_task=solveCategory&lc=en&dlc=en&cc=us&product=3552351&lang=en

 

[aford10]

You say it's automatically rebooting, and stuck in a 20-30 second reboot loop. That doesn't sound like what that article is describing. It sounds like they are describing random restarts with display loss on restart.

Try tapping the delete key and/or f8 on startup to see if you can access the safe mode menu or the BIOS. I'm curious as to if you are even getting that far. If not, it's likely hardware failure (ie, RAM).

 

[narniafan]

None of that stuff worked. But it still magically [literally--I prayed] came back to life Thursday night. I don't know how. It's been working ever since. But the reason the problem started has been getting worse the last few days: the screen freezes! The computer locks up, i.e. becomes totally unresponsive and the only solution is to turn it off and back on. So far, it's done this 2-3 times today, as well as 1-2 times yesterday. What makes it do this? Any suggestions on prevention/fixes?

 

[aford10]

Start-->run--> chkdsk /r
This should tell you it can't run the scan at that time, but it will run the next time you restart. Restart the computer, it will scan the hard drive and try to repair any damage.

Download memtest and test your RAM.
http://www.memtest86.com/


I would also suggest saving anything you don't want to lose, in case the computer decides to completely crash.