Black Screen Blinking Cursor On Boot up

Need some urgent help. One of my XP desktop is not starting up at all. It was very good until last night but today when I am trying to boot, after checking the BIOS, where it should go for Windows bootup, instead it gets stuck with a black blank screen with just a mouse cursor blinking on the top left screen.

I thought I can repair it using the XP installation disk but I was wrong. After restarting the PC, I get to the screen where it says “Checking Current System Configuration” and then again I get to the same blank screen with blinking cursor mouse. Can anyone please tell me what has gone wrong and how can I fix the problem? Many Thanks.

Well i have been through this recently. Actual scenario was i installed a scrabble game which asked me to restart the game to apply all changes. until then my system was working great. When i restarted the system it got stuck at the same black monitor as you described with blinking cursor. Even there was no noise of hard drive, neither my mobo keys were operational. I tried pressing numlock, capsklock, etc but none of them were working.

After lots of research, searches on web, troubleshooting i came to know that the problem is with my mobo itself. It was dead. I had to change the mobo to get my system on again.

It may be the same with you as well. To make it sure whether motherboard is faulty or not, turn off the system, unplug, remove your RAM sticks, and fit it again. Now try to start the computer. If you hear the ram beep then system is fine and if not then mobo is dead. You will need to buy a new one.

Hello Fanibhushan. Did you make the required changes in the bios to boot from Cd? Enter the Bios, make sure you have set the boot order to boot from CD first. Let me know what happens now.

You can also check this article describing How to boot the computer with a start up diskette? http://www.nu2.nu/bootdisk/ntboot/