I just turned on my computer (granted, it's just a 6 yrold backup machine but it's got some stuff I need to get out before I junk it) and the monitors just stay black (after a quick no signal going to sleep msg). The keyboard blinks once, and then becomes unresponsive (I'm assuming because I can't see anything but even ctrp-alt-del doesn't seem to do anything). Is there any way to determine if this is a simple video card failure, or something more sinister?
Sometimes the problem could be hard drive failure; try unplugging and then re plugging the hard drive until you can get through.
This can be a lot of things wrong. I hard one experience of "black screen", because the Function Key/Screen swithc turned off, I ended up bought a new screen, but the old one was not broken. LOL. Another experience was I had to replace/upgrade bio, forgot exact why. It can be anything. You need to try and error and search the web.
I think you're better off taking the drive out of it and hooking that drive up in another system as a secondary drive. Get your stuff that way. The only time I saw what you're describing was on a friend's box for his security system at a business and it turned out to be a fried mobo and psu. Don't think you want to go through all that to get files off an old box. Good luck.
When this happened to me..I unplugged and replugged the vidio card...problem solved... I remember one time it was a cable not plugged all the way in...in the back of the computer. screw those screws in all the way after making sure that big parallel plug in seated all the way... One time wifey vacuumed very close to my computer and everything went crazy...luckily I rebooted ok... oh yeah...look at those pins inside the ends of your cables...make sure they are not bent or something.. I am remembering over past years and this is all that comes to me just now... ES
The first question is: Do you see any display at all when you turned the computer power on? Typical BIOS company logo, and say something like the system is booting up, total RAM size, etc.. Even if your hard disk is no good, you should be able to see the BIOS display and hit the F12 key or something (different from manufacturer to manufacturer) to get into BIOS/CMOS setup program. Can you do that? If you see the disk drive status light keeps clicking, but absolutely no display on the screen, then it's likely problem with the video and the disk drive is okay. (It's unlikely that both disk drive and the video go bad at the same time.) If this is the case, you can: 1) try to replace the video card. If it has an onboard video outlet, then plug in a new video card or something. 2) or just take out the disk drive and mount the drive on another computer to salvage the data.
If you hear 4 beeps when booting that means bad or no video card detected. No beeps doesn't mean it's not bad though. Best suggestion is to take the hard drive to a different computer to retreive your files if nothing easy like resetting cables or reseating video card or RAM resolves the matter. Be careful not to walk around with any of these items unprotected without an anti-static bag. I've seen them get fried beyond repair quickly just from unnoticed static.
Try installing a new battery that goes into the motherboard. It's the one that is the size of a quarter, and flat. It supplies power to your BIOS chip, which detects your hardware when you boot the computer. No battery = no saved preconfigured BIOS settings.