My PC was working fine last night, and I was prompted to perform the monthly Windows update. I did so, and restarted. When it tried to reboot, the PC beeped once, and the screen was blank. I didn't get a boot screen at all, no bios screen, no windows screen. I put my Win7 install DVD in the drive, but nothing different happened.

Although it is coincidental, it sounds as if your computer may have developed a hardware failure. Once you figure out what the problem is with your hardware, then you can determine if there is something wrong with the Windows update. It is highly unlikely Windows update could have damaged you system hardware.Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

My searches (on my laptop, not the PC at home) tend to suggest that the RAM is the problem (since there is one beep). Just my luck, I can't get that specific page of Dell's support troubleshooting for this problem to load so I can't confirm if that is the correct beep code for my Inspiron 546.

Please restore the system in WinRE. If you can log on after the restore, I suggest you temporary remove antivirus and install the Windows updates again. If the computer is running properly after update, install the antivirus.Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

If the system will not boot up, then I don't think System Restore is possible. He needs to boot the system before he can worry about System Restore. From original post: "When it tried to reboot, the PC beeped once, and the screen was blank. I didn't get a boot screen at all, no bios screen, no windows screen. I put my Win7 install DVD in the drive, but nothing different happened." And, from second post "My searches (on my laptop, not the PC at home) tend to suggest that the RAM is the problem (since there is one beep)."Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

Apparently, the problem was with the BIOS not being able to boot up. Like Rick said in the first reply, it seems to have been a coincidental motherboard failure. Of course, my PC was 2 days out of warranty when this happened. First computer I don't build myself in 11 years and this happens. Thanks for nothing, Dell.

I've used WinRE in the past with success, but I can't even get the PC to boot. No Dell scree, no Win screen, no flashing cursor. I've ordered a new motherboard and will install it next Monday.

Actually, my case was not quite as bad, as I was able to make it to the Windows splash screen, but the boot sequence seems to come to a stop (after the update - in fact, I had just hit the 'restart' button when this happened). I tried it 4 times (and 4 times had to restore to a previous version). I checked that all the available Microsoft updates had been installed at the time (in case there were unexpected dependencies). In the last attempt, I waited for an hour with the splash screen, on the off-chance it was just slow to install and configure the updates. Howwever, after 5 minutes, the hard disk light went off and there seemed to be nothing be read from or written to the disk.