Cursor stuck in the middle of the screen?

Blank Screen (Black) w/ Blinking Cursor when I put up?

• I have a 5 year old Dell Desktop. Windows XP. I'm getting the blank or black screen of death. Everytime, I boot up in normal mode it goes to a blank/black screen with a cursor blinking on the left hand corner. Nothing else. It won't allow me to do anything else. If I press F8 when I boot up. I don't get the prompts to ask me if I want the safe mode, etc. Instead I get the following msg: Phoenix RomBios Plus Version 1.10 A0z Copyright info More Copy right info Dell System DimensionSerious Bios VErsion A0z Keyboard Failure underneath this a blinking cursor that won't move My keyboard is on. The num lock key is green. But I can't type anything because the cursor just keeps on blinking. I believe my keyboard works. I've NEVER had problems with it. Lastly, if I press F12, I get the Boot Device Menu. I can move my cursor to the options. Click on an option. But nothing happens. The cursor goes to bottom of the last line and blinks on and off. I'm unable at that point to choose another option. So it's stuck. I've tried uploading the Operation System disc and it's I hear it make the noise but nothing is loading. I can't get it too upload. Even if I go through and press F8 or F12 or F2 it's not taking the OS cd. Help!

• Answer:

  You can try this: Unplug everything except the keyboard and mouse and video. If it boots, you can figure out what device is making it stick. Take out all the USB drives, external hard drives, cameras or anything except keyboard, mouse and video. . If it is still stuck, unplug the data cable to your hard drive and see if you can boot off the Windows CD. Hit f12 when starting for boot devices menu and just see if it boots. If you can boot up the CD, you have a dead hard drive. Thats my guess. I just had one do that here and I had to spend 40 dollars and get a new hard drive (500 GB at New Egg) Mine dead one was a 2 year old western digital 160 GB and I lost everything and the symptoms were exactly the same- sorry