My second pute got weird tonight, and I am at a loss.

I had gone to add a cd to my iTunes library, and the cd drive was not being read. I rebooted the pute, and I got the initial screen with video card info, then the blue screen with options for setup, boot menu or system recovery, and then a black screen with the little flashing dash in the upper left hand corner. Nothing further.

I shut down and started several times with the same result. I am unable to get the F11 recovery to respond. When I go to the boot menu and try the backup drive I get a 'NTLDR missing', and have to restart which leads to the same thing I have been getting.

Any ideas or suggestions from you folks that know about these contraptions?

Had something very much like that happen recently. little flashing dash in the left corner then a lock up with out booting the OS. turns out bad vid card was crashing Vista before boot up.
try tossing in your older card and see if that fixes it. you did keep your old one just in case right?

Thanks.

Actually, I think it was just the accumulation of dust due to these hardwood floors, and my not applying the vacuum on a steady enough basis. After cleaning and letting it sit for a day, it booted right up. Think some overheating might have been going on.

Yeah i was going to suggest that you check the dust. It can make them crazy. Im trying to fix a computer for some old folks that live down the street from me. Its doing all kinds of wierd stuff.

Really have to be thankful for the fact that the hardware and firmware on videocards has failsafes to keep you from frying thme by not allowing your computer to post or boot. At 200-600 dollars copy thats a nice peice of mind. Alot of ATI cards even have little red LEDs that light up various "trouble codes" in the event of trouble so you can figure out what is wrong.