My problem is happening at Boot UP, I get the Bios boot screen and when it completes the load it goes to a black screen with a flashing prompt where the widows boot up would happen. The prompt does nothing.
This started right after a Microsoft update(May 12) and I did a restart. No failure happened on my two laptops that got the same update running the same OS.
I have tried a different harddrive and attempted to reload window xp but that also goes to a black screen after the initial statement, "Checking your system".
I also put the harddrive into a external case and can see everything on the drive. Ran Diagnostics, Scan Disk, Disk Defrag, with nothing indicating a issue.
I even checked the Bios battery and it has power.
Can this be a mother board or pentium chip issue? Virus issue?
Anything I should check prior to taking it to a repair shop.
Dell 8250, 3.2 pentium 3, 1 G of mem, WD 250 HD, SB Audigy Sound card, Ati graphic card w/128mb mem, cd-rom drive. Running XP sp3, McAfee, Windows Defender, SpyBot
Thank you for your time.