Black Screen Of Death (Sad Story)

[Guest]

Alright everybody get ready for a sad one.
I, GhandoTang, have made a large mistake. I upgraded my Windows XP Media
Edition to Vista 5384. Enter: Black Screen Of Death. Installation went
somewhat smoothly (I believe there was one stutter step) all the way up to
the first full boot. I am running a pretty new dell system with 1gig of ram
and a Geforce 6 series gaphics card. I have no OS discs (dell does not send
them with computers anymore) and no boot discs of any kind. I get no further
than the black desktop with the Windows build 5384 text in the bottom right
corner. Just to make this completely clear, my computer is worhtless in its
present state. I cant change drivers, I cant reload windows, I cant boot
from disc (only external usb cd rom or floppy (i know it makes no sense but
thats what it says)) I cant do anything that requires the computer to do
anything. I have done everything I can possibly think of from disecting the
computer removing everything I could and starting it up (even running it
without the video card, navigating the menus from memory) to changing all of
the settings in the initial setup screen. i have tried every available
option on my boot screens and nothing works. When I attempt the "load
previous version of windows" option I get a black screen wiht a gray bar
across the bottom and a big old freeze. Please refrain from leaving comments
that advice to wait, load drivers, clean install Vista, or any other ideas
that have been tried, tested, and proved lacking. Please help me as soon as
possible, my computer is by best friend and I am lonesome without her!
-GhandoTang

p.s. Is anybody else wondering where all the Windows people are. I must
have read over 30 posts on the black screen of death and yet nobody has come
forth wiht anything remotely resembling a definate answer. Windows people
out there, please help. It is us, the beta testers of the world, that help
you to realize problems that will occur in the real world. Without us your
product would be released on the hope that people are going to use it exactly
as you intended, and we all now that that is not so. We are real people,
these are real problems, and we could use some real solutions.

 

[katy]

I can't help with the black screen but call Dell, ask for Support and ask
them to send you the cd of the OS that came with your system. They don't
automatically ship it with the unit but they sent me one, my niece, my
friend one, all after we/they received the machine. Call Dell for that much
anyway, at least you'll have 'something'. You'll need some #s from your
machine when you call........

I maybe would try a different video card too but that's just a guess and you
probably tried that already.
katy

 

[Guest]

Thanks Katy,
I will definately call dell and get my OS disc from them. They really never
should have stoped sending them with the systems anyways. As for right now,
Its looking like my best bet is a external floppy boot. Im gonna try that
and then I will make sure to let you guys now how it went.
Thanks for all the help
-Ghandotang

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

You probably have a recovery partition (hidden). It is supposed to work off
of F11, if I remember right, but Vista would have mashed it. Dell has a
fix.

 

[Lang Murphy]

I just got a Dell XPS 400 and I paid $10 for the OS disk. In the future, you
might consider paying for the CD's. I know, I know... they used to be
included but nothing's really free anyway. When I was first looking at the
XPS 400, the OS CD's were included in the price. The price for the XPS 400
dropped $10 and, voila, there was a $10 charge for the OS CD's... like I
said, nothing's really free. Next time, buy the OS CD's. Less hassle in the
long run...

 

[Jim Fraas]

When I odered mine they gace me an option to have either the Restore or OS
disc (for $10 extra)
I chose the OS disc.

I also have a CD with drivers

With the OS disc I wqas able to reformat and get RID of all of Dell's
preinstalled crap.