Boot up / Black screen NEED HELP PLEASE

[Guest]

Ok, I bought this computer from a 3rd party. However, he had uninstalled
some of the features of msoffice like frontpage and word and stuff. I went
into recovery and did a system recovery to a date before these had been
uninstalled. When I rebooted after that I got the startup countdown screen
with the lil green bar saying that Windows xp Home Edition and loading, but
after that is gone when the blue screen usually pops up saying loading local
settings and stuff ... this does not pop up. All I get is a black screen.
My mouse is able to move around on the screen and all. I could not turn it
off so I had to manually turn it off by unplugging. I know big nono but had
no other choice. Well when i booted again it said windows failed to shut
down properly and to reboot with my choice of safe mode and all that ... well
i put safe mode on and it started to load but once again when it reached
where it should of given me my screen it said safe mode all around it but was
totally black. Absolutely nothing , no start button, no taskbar, no icons
whatsoever. I am totally confused because windows seems to be still
installed but there is nothing there but blackness. The major problem to
this is that I have no installation setup disk at all. This was just a
tower. Its a HP desktop pavillion XT963. I beleive it was purchased at
Wal-mart. Please if anyone can help me with a solution before I have to buy
Windows XP and install it over I would greatly appreciate it. Thank You in
Advance.

 

[Guest]

My advise is to get a xp or 98se, it could be that the OS is already
corrupted, best would be to do a fresh install again.

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Hi,

If you have no installation media, then you have no viable means of
recovery. With a purchase, you should get some sort of recovery media, or
sooner or later you will be out of luck. Also, with "new to you" machine,
you should always, always, always start with a fresh install rather than try
to work in someone elses mess (there is a reason they got rid of it, you
know). Purchase the media, do a clean installation.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Associate Expert - WindowsXP Expert Zone

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org