windows 7, some other kind of "black screen of death"

[andstef]

Hello,

I have this problem with my dell vostro 1720 laptop. I recently installed windows 7, and everything was all right until it didn't start anymore. The dell logo appeared after starting the computer then when the windows logo should have appeared, there was just a black screen with a cursor (like the one in DOS) blinking in the top left corner of the screen. Nothing works but Ctrl+Alt+Del. I tried to fix it with the installation disk (system restore, fix startup problems etc.) but it didn't work so I had to reinstall. And a couple of weeks later, last night, this problem reappeared.

I suspect it is a hardware related problem (maybe the hard drive has a bad sector or something).

Do you have any idea what could cause this?

And if you have a fix for it, other than reinstalling windows every time this happens will make me very happy.

 

Thank you! Best regards

[IceAged]

Andrei - try running some diagnostic tools on your hardware. Memtest86 will test your memory for errors; you'll need to burn it to disk and configure your BIOS to load it at startup. Instructions and download here: http://www.memtest.org

 

Seatools will run a full diagnostic on your hard drives and identify any mechanical problems.

 

http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=SeaTools&vgnextoid=720bd20cacdec010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD

 

You can (more or less) rule out your memory and drives being the problem if they pass the comprehensive versions of the tests.