My laptop refused to start my windows USB when I wanted to reinstall and I suspected it had something to do with grub for my dual booting. So I booted Ubuntu via another USB and I formatted my drive. I've never formatted form Ubuntu before and I didn't get how to un-partition, but I figured as long as everything was deleted I could just do that with my windows USB later.
I must have done something horribly wrong because when I start the machine it only gives me a black screen. The only indication I have of anything working at all is the light in the power button. None of my boot USBs does anything and spamming F2 for bios also yields no result. Anyone know what's going on?
Hard to tell as you haven't told us what/how you've done. But formatting the drive if that's what you've done will not cause the computer to not POST.
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Step by step I did it like this:
- Run Ubuntu 14.04.2 from memory stick
- Go to Disks
- Right click and select Format on all the partitions (around 5) my HDD has, format them as NTFS.
First time I rebooted I did get an expected message about not having an OS, but all later times have just given me a 100% black screen.
Remove power cord. Take out battery + CMOS battery. Put them back in after 30 seconds, boot up and you should get a POST screen.
It might be skipping though post quick. @PoshGeordie suggestion might help. You've not done anything bad.
Can also try hitting the BIOS setup key while it boots to see if it'll skip into the BIOS and set it to boot from USB.
I wasn't 100% sure how the CMOS was suppose to look but I guess it was this round yellow thing: http://imgur.com/oN1n6mn
I tried what you said a couple of times but it didn't work.
Didn't work.
I also tried using another screen out of desperation, didn't see anything there either.
All you did was change the file system effectively deleting the OS, ive done that hundreds of time. Something else is going on. Formatting your hard drive will not do this to your computer.
It POST the first time, something else is going on imo. Have you tried removing the drive completely? or checking something else hasn't changed?
what actually happens? Power supply is running? does it POST? does the monitor even try to turn on? Tried your on board graphics?
Yep, something else is going on. You should be able to get to POST without any drive being attached at all.
The thing that makes this that little bit harder is that it's a laptop.
I forgot its a laptop xD but you are correct, it should POST regardless whats on the HDD.
Depending on the BIOS of the laptop manufacturer, sometimes they don't allow something to be booted into linux natively with boot flags or anything of the sort. I think you're only hope is reinstall the OS on another machine. Like take the HDD out and put it in a different machine and try installing.
If it was a lenovo.... god help you.