Windows 8 won't boot - Black Screen

[penfold]

I got a call from my brother yesterday that his laptop won't start. Apparently it started running a little slow so he re-booted it and it shutdown & installed Windows updates. From then on it didn't boot back up and he (as they say a little knowledge is a bad thing) googled a solution which suggested changing the bios boot order. Needless to say this didn't solve the problem and now when you power it on I can't get into the BIOS to check the settings. From a picture he took on his phone it looks like he set it for PXE boot and it failed and went round in a loop, but now the screen doesn't show anything when booting.

 

I've checked the output by plugging in external and have seen that there have been a few issues where Windows 8 black screens after boot, but do any of these also result in complete black screen from boot? I'm not sure how to get in to change/check the boot order to either force it back into the HDD or from DVD to try and repair if I can't get into the BIOS. I was wondering if it was trying to recover from some hibernation state but I took the battery out and tried it from fresh to get the same thing.

 

Anyone seen something similar?

[happymeal]

So you can't see anything at all - no initial Dell/Acer/Whatever model splash screen?

 

Might be that the graphics driver has gone u/s (Think nvidia released a few over the weekend) - is it still under warranty?

[penfold]

Nothing on screen at all. It could be that an automatic driver update has caused it, but I can't get it to even attempt to boot into windows at the moment. Yes it's still under warrenty. Listening to it it seems like things are working as I put a DVD in and it span up (but I didn't have any boot disks to see if it would boot from them).

[speckytecky]

Sounds like the motherboard to me?

[penfold]

Sounds like the motherboard to me?

I'm trying to rule out software issue first as from the sounds of it, everything was ok until it was rebooted. Then making changes in the BIOS made things worse. If I can't get it to boot into anything tonight, it'll have to go back under warrenty.

[Arthur]

If you hold down the power button while Windows is booting does the recovery menu appear the next time you turn the laptop on?

 

www.edugeek.net/forums/behind-red-door/114551-windows-8-passwords.html#post980461

[penfold]

Nothing actually shows when powering on the laptop. I have advised him to take it back to get it repaired as it's less than 6 months old.

[penfold]

OK, got the laptop back and all that was said was that it was "fixed". At which point I requested confirmation of what exactly they "fixed" and to get something in writing. I've just found out that apparently they reset/recovered the bios. Am I right in thinking the only way they could do that would be via the jumpers on the MB? Am I being a bit over the top in thinking that it's a bit poor? I've never had a problem with a bios except for when a battery was failing after years of the computer being used not months. Should I expect something in writing so if there is a continual problem (like it happening again) then it can be highlighted that they never fixed it?

 

I thought you would normally only have BIOS errors if you had been messing with the settings or there was hardware problems?