Hey all,

I've got an Acer 6930G with Vista 64-bit. Yesterday it shut down for no apparent reason and now when I restart it the machine loads the BIOS and then, upon attempting to load Windows, simply shows me a black screen with a blinking cursor at the top (akin to the command line prompt). I can't alt+F10 to format the drive and reload Vista (even though Acer said I could... bastards) either. I can access the bios and it still displays my HDD and all that good stuff, it just won't load Windows.

I've got all my stuff backed up to an external (just not my OS) and Acer didn't ship with any recovery disks (because Acer is turning into Microsoft when it comes to gouging people for money). I'm tempted to just load up Ubuntu and format the thing, but I thought I'd look here for any help. The Google has left me high and dry (just said things like Alt+F10 and "use your recovery disks").

Thoughts?

 

I'm not sure if it's the same thing, but I had that problem just a couple of weeks ago. I ran a couple diagnostic tests, and I found out my SSD died on me.

If you can, try to boot up your command prompt and enter 'diskpart'

Wait for a moment, then once diskpart is loaded, enter 'list disk'

If your disk is not listed, then you HDD is dead, and you will have to buy a new one, even if it is recognized by your BIOS.

 

If you have an Ubuntu live CD, you could boot that up and try to mount the HD (not format it). That'll tell you whether the disk is bad.

 

Hey guys, thanks for all the tips. Microsoft was kind enough to put the x64 Vista Recovery disc online for download and I was able to burn it to disc using another computer. I'll let you know how things turn out.

Okay, so the System Restore actually ran, but no dice. Didn't fix a thing. I've been eying the new Ubuntu distro for a while so I'll just go that path. I'll let you know how it rolls.