dell labtop crash

[germcarthur]

Hi, wondering if anyone can be of help pls. While using my labtop a message came up to say that it was shutting down to protect my computer. I started it up again but after the dell startup comes on the screen goes completely black with a flashing cursor on the top left hand side of screen. Shut down and restarted, pressed F12 immediately, can get into PSA+Pre-Boot Assessment. System runs through a series of checks including System Board system test, hard drive DST SHORT TEST, CD ROM / DVD, video card, LCD graphics, and Memory test, all come up with passing test. After the testing ends a prompt comes up - Booting Dell Diagnostic Utility Partition, with an OK icon- I press the OK button and I immediately am back to the black screen with a flashing cursor. Can anyione help pls. Sry for long message, just want to give as much info as possible

 

[lunarlander]

Reboot the PC and press F8. This should get you to a menu that has Safe Mode. Choose Last Known Good configuration, and see if that works.

 

[germcarthur]

Thankyou for your reply. I have tried that but I am not getting anywhere when I press F8, it just returns to flashing cursor. By starting up again and pressing F12 immediately I can get into Onboard NIC, Broadcom UNDI etc comes up. Next paragraph starts withy Intel Base- Code etc.
After a moment the following print comes up-PXE-E61: Media Test Failure, check cable.
PXE-MOF:Exiting Broadcom PXE ROM
Flashing cursor sign

Also I have been into my email on another labtop and I notice that there is a notice posted at the top of my email page saying that it looks like I haveenabled internet explorer compatability view and that gmail works better if I turn this off, I have not noticed this message before and I was in my email when the labtop crashed, I am wondering if this is having any effect.

Many thanks in advance
GER

 

[lunarlander]

Check if the hard drive cable has come loose.

 

[germcarthur]

The hard drive is set into a a space in the labtop which is held in by three screws rather than attached to cable. I took out the hard drive and swapped it into an external hard drive device and was able to copy all my files ( that was a relief as I was afraid it may have been a dead hard drive.Put the hard drive back into labtop but getting nowhere still, any more ideas pls.

 

[germcarthur]

I still havent resolved my problem. I rarely have access to a computer now so its very intermittent that I can try to identify the problem. I am now wondering if the problem is hardrive corruption because when I removed my hardrive and put it into an external hard drive casing I copied my files to down ( only some of my files copied down) but I now find that the harrddrive I copied to is not now working. I am wondering if the following file may be the cause of it -coussent.com/open, as I was inh my email and in that site when it crashed.

Many thanks gor all the help so far

Ger

 

[germcarthur]

Problem solved I think, virus caused the crash, wiped the labtop and reloaded, seems to be going ok. Many thanks for all the helpfull hints.