Last night I shut down my desktop computer using the power button, and later that night I tried to start it, no dice. The BIOS screen comes up, and then the screen goes black. I did some troubleshooting in BIOS and the self scan it does with the hard drive said it was working properly. After BIOS I can press F8 quickly enough to get to the "pick how to load windows" screen. I tried all the safe modes, the last known good configuation, everything on the menu. All it does is make my screen go black, and not start. What could this be and how can I correct this problem? Thanks for any help.

Well to start off, I would disconnect any USB devices, and also would remove all PCI cards and unplug all optical devices. I would have only 1 stick of RAM, hard drive, video card installed. After that I would connect the mouse, keyboard, and monitor and see if it will boot.

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My 'guess' would be a Graphics adapter problem. If Rayburns suggestions don't help, you might want to try swapping it out.

Did you have autoupdates turned on? If so, SP3 may have downloaded and screwed the machine up.
Disregard. If the machine was turned off it couldn't have downloaded.

I also ditto aegis's suggestion.

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so is it unlikley it's a software problem?

I tried all of Rayburn's suggestions and unfortunatly it still didn't boot. I only have one Graphics card and it's onboard. I'm not sure if I have SP3 but I do know automatic updates are turned off, so probably not. A friend of mine just gave it to me so I havn't explored everything on it.

Have you tried all sticks of RAM individually?

If that doesn't work, or 2 or more sticks of RAM weren't installed in the first place, attempt a Repair install with a Windows XP CD. Note that you will lose all Windows Updates by doing it.

Make sure Jesus is your Saviour!