The problem: The other day I was messing around trying to uninstall an IDE (netbeans) so that I could reinstall a different version. Went to control panel/uninstall/remove a programme, tried to remove IDE but somewhere it was still in use. At this point the only programme that I think I had open was chrome. Admittedly, I should've tried closeling chrome and tried to uninstall again but at the time I didn't think it could've been in use by it? Anyway, instead of trying to track down the programme in use I just attempted to restart the computer via the start menu. Everything seemed to be going fine, windows was closing, it got to the black screen, and then nothing but the black screen. Thats werid I thought and forced a shutdown via holding down the button. Pressed the button again to start up and I got nothing but a black screen. Nothing, no blinking mouse curser, no manufacturers logo, no windows logo, no bios, nothing. CD drive and keyboard unresponsive. Where to from here? There is a far bit of dust on my graphics card fan and a bit on my motherboard fan. I have my windows 7 CD and would've tried to boot with it if I could get to the bios. I suppose I'll need to hunt down my motherboard box as I can't remember what it is off the top of my head. I have a relatively new power supply - Corsair CX430, and my harddrive is also relatively new. While I go hunt down the motherboard box, what do you think it sounds like?

Unless you get to logon, try Last known good... from F8. Rgds Milos

Update: Turns out my CD drive wasn't on (do'h) however even with it now on still get the black screen and even with windows 7 CD in, it won't use it to boot. So I'm back at the black screen and nothing else point. Just to repeat: I press the start button, I get the black screen and nothing else, I insert the windows 7 CD and the cdrom makes its 'im reading the CD humming noise', I still get nothing but the black screen. Still looking for the motherboard box...

See thats the thing, I can't even get to bios/dos. Thanks for the reply though.

You've got a hardware problem somewhere, so start with very basic troubleshooting. Shut the system down and unplug it from the wall or UPS. Disconnect anything that's not necessary, such as a printer, external drives (HDD and optical), game controllers, etc. Take the side off the PC and either (a) pull the CMOS battery for a minute or two, or (b) look for the CMOS reset jumper and short it out for about 10 seconds. Now plug it back in and see if you can at least get into BIOS. Don't reconnect any of the external hardware yet. If you can now get into BIOS, and had any special settings before, you may have to re-enable those settings to boot. Some of those settings might involve RAID, AHCI, or possibly other drive settings. If it boots into Windows OK, then you probably have nothing special set in BIOS. HTH! SC Tom

You've got a hardware problem somewhere, so start with very basic troubleshooting. Shut the system down and unplug it from the wall or UPS. Disconnect anything that's not necessary, such as a printer, external drives (HDD and optical), game controllers, etc. Take the side off the PC and either (a) pull the CMOS battery for a minute or two, or (b) look for the CMOS reset jumper and short it out for about 10 seconds. Now plug it back in and see if you can at least get into BIOS. Don't reconnect any of the external hardware yet. If you can now get into BIOS, and had any special settings before, you may have to re-enable those settings to boot. Some of those settings might involve RAID, AHCI, or possibly other drive settings. If it boots into Windows OK, then you probably have nothing special set in BIOS. HTH! SC Tom

Get ready for do'h moment number two. Short version: its back to normal. long verison: while I was messing around with it after i got the black screen, I must've tapped the VGA cable. Next day, I tap it again and my screen came back. Windows did pick up on come boot errors somewhere and manged to fix itself.

Get ready for do'h moment number two. Short version: its back to normal. long verison: while I was messing around with it after i got the black screen, I must've tapped the VGA cable. Next day, I tap it again and my screen came back. Windows did pick up on come boot errors somewhere and manged to fix itself.

Well, at least it's going again, despite the do'h moments, and it's not like we all haven't had them :-) SC Tom