Yeah hello everytime i go to start my computer it comes up with a black blank screen with a white dash in the top left corner and i just dont know what to do could you please help me!

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314... Computer stops responding with a black screen when you start Windows XP

We don't know what to tell you because there are many causes for Windows booting to black screen with blinking cursor. What's the last thing you did when the PC was in good working condition? Check out link below for known causes. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314503 i_Xp/VistaUser

Do you even see a windows logo on boot at any point? Have you tried booting in safe mode (press F5 or F8 repeatedly after your computer beeps/blips then select safe mode with networking) If you're not seeing a windows logo before the black screen happens and you can't get the safe mode menu to come up then it's likely a hardware problem like an unreadable drive or some bad ram but usually the bios gives some indication of that... usually. CodyBane++ web application development

check the boot sequence in the system BIOS, try removing all other devices apart from the hdd with your OS installed. If this fails it may be worth trying to boot with XP disk into recovery console and trying fixboot or fixmbr, if you google "fixboot XP" or "fixmbr XP" you should find more info on this. It may also be worth running a chkdsk from here.