black screen, blinking cursor @ clean install

Hello all,

I upgraded to win7 two weeks ago, and yesterday I started having some trouble:

When playing cod4 the computer froze. A couple of hard resets, a driver and bios update later, the computer still froze when entering a game. The screen would start blinking, the sound was off, and then the game just crashed to desktop.

Other games blinked and artifacted as well. I think my gpu died.

Today the computer got stuck at the windows logo at startup repeatedly, no way of getting through.

I tried a clean install, but during the final stage of the installation (after a reboot and some "finalizing installation") the screen went black with a blinking cursor, and did not change.

I tried another clean install, same problem.

This can hardly also be related to the gpu, I'm thinking the hdd died as well, in which case I might as well throw out my 15-month-old machine (Dell xps 630i)

Any advice would be warmly welcomed!

Thanks in advance.

Thanks for the reply!

I'm afraid I can't do the memory diagnostics test as it requires a working operating system. I simply cannot install the os.

I've been reading up in the mean time, it appears people advise turning off on-board video during install for issues like mine.
So the issue might be related to my gpu after all I gather.
I've been looking through the bios, but I can't find such an option. Google also isn't showing any usable info, do you know how I would go about turning off on-board video?

Also, during installation I am able to delete, create and format partitions, does this mean that my hdd is working?

A million thanks!

Of course! I'm sorry, you clearly said method 2.

It's diagnosing right now, I'll post the results forthwith!

Thanks!

Well I did the test, and it appears no problems were found.

I didn't see any official confirmation though, it said results would be posted when I rebooted but I just get the "windows was not closed properly" (or similar) screen.

So I guess the RAM is not faulty.

Could a broken graphics card mess up a clean install of win7?

I deduced this from a few replies to similar issues in other threads: they proposed to disable on-board video. I still have not found a way to do this, I cannot find such an option in the BIOS.

My computer is a little over one years old, was of the highest spec when I ordered it, and is now bricked. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

If the black screen appears with the blinking dash when entering bios, you need to disconnect your hard drive, then try to go to your bios settings and change your hard drive to ATA instead of AHCI. Then reconnect your hard drive and see if that works...

It doesn't happen when going into the bios though, it happens when the win7 clean install is finalizing.

I've run some diagnostics, and it would appear the video memory is faulty.

Could faulty video memory screw up a clean install in this way?

why the "windows" I opened will be closed automaticlly when I use my mouse to operate, it will not be closed if I use keyboard to do that.It will not affect if I open any websie. Please help! My OS is Windows 7 64 bits. Thanks!