Black screen and constant re-boot.

[Captainbeaky]

Machine is an old Sony Vaio desktop.
It used to run Windows 7 many moons ago, and way my partners main machine.

I need another PC in the workshop, so I've dug out all the old machines to see what still works.

I fired this up to remind myself what was on it.
Worked OK, apart from CMOS battery fail - changed battery and set the time in the BIOS.

Fired it up second time, now it's asking for Windows software key!
I decided to ignore the SW key warning, and see if the machine would update etc, while I dug out the SW Key.

I left the machine on Overnight (it was very obviously doing "stuff").
Came back, machine on, not doing "stuff" and a black screen.

So, insert Windows 7 Pro 32bit disc and run restore - No Go.

Try a new install on the 320GB drive (which was by now empty).
It has 2 drives, a 120gb for system and a 320Gb for backup and data.

Will not install.

In both cases, I end up with a repeating reboot, with the machine not fully clearing POST.

If I interrupt it, I can get it to boot from the WIN 7 disc, but get the same again.

I've had a poke around the BIOS, and all looks OK.

Any ideas?

Thanks In advance.
Mike.

 

[Megahertz07]

Try to do a disk check on the disks.
Boot from the Win 7 installation disk and on the first screen hit Shift+F10. It will open a CMD window.
Type:
diskpart
list volume (take note the volumes letters assigned to the disk partitions)
exit
chkdsk x: /f (replace x with the drive letters fond above)

If it finds bad blocks, bad clusters, bad sectors etc, the disk has a hardware failure and must be replaced.