Windows won't load -- black screen with cursor

[charlie61]

I have a HP a6683w running Windows Vista. When you turn the computer on it comes up with the HP screen but then goes to a black screen with a cursor blinking in the upper left corner. You can select F10 setup and get it to come up and also the ESC key works but the F11 (system recovery) will not do anything as well as F8 (safe mode) also will not do anything. Any ideas for a fix would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks

 

[Tmagic650]

The C drive may be corrupted or going bad. Try running CHKDSK by going to Computer and right-click on the C drive. Select Properties, tools, check now. Put a check in both boxes to set a disk check on the next start up. Any errors mean trouble

 

[charlie61]

I don't think I can get to the point that will let me run this check. All that comes up is the HP screen with the choices of ESCAPE, F10 SETUP, and F11 SYSTEM RECOVERY. All that does anything is ESCAPE and F!0 SETUP. If you don't click on one of these quickly the screen goes black with the cursor blinking in the upper left hand corner of the screen.

 

[Tmagic650]

F11 System Recovery is what you want. You can choose to do a destructive (factory) recovery to return the laptop like it was when you first took it out of it's box. If this recovery fails, this may indicate a hardware failure

 

[charlie61]

F11 System Recovery won't do anything. The only thing that works is F10 Setup.

 

[Tmagic650]

Alright, the hard drive has probably failed and it will have to be replaced. The recovery files would be on another partition of the boot drive if set up that way... Because the F11 functions don't work, that part of the drive is also bad