Black screen upon loading computer

Hi there!

I have an HP computer with Windows ME recently bought in August. Early on, whenever I turned it on, it would load and go straight to my desktop. Now, whenever I turn the computer on, the blue HP logo screen appears for a couple of seconds, then it goes to a black screen that gives info on memory size, floppy disk, etc (things I do not understand), and "press F1 for set up, F2 to continue". My brother told me to hit F2, then it goes to my desktop and everything is fine.



My question is: how do I get rid of the black screen? So once I turn on the computer it goes straight to my desktop (no need to hit F2)

Also, I ventured into F1 Set-up and this is the menu screen that appears. However, I didn't touch/changed anything - in fear I would crash it. I am a university student and NEED my computer for homework



THANK YOU for the help

You see on your first screen that your floppy drive is throwing the error.

This could just be a bad floppy drive or connection.

The BIOS POST (your first screen) is alerting you to an issue (Floppy Failure).

Pressing F2 is just your confirmation.

You could test and repair or replace your floppy drive or connection but you should also be able to set the BIOS to move on.

In other words there should be a setting: probably under: Boot > Boot Settings

Wait for F2 if Error

Disable this function and the BIOS will no longer Wait for you to press F2.

Here is a screen shot of the Boot page:




Just to note, last month or so, when my computer started to load the black screen it was sometime right after, of a couple days after my brother was downloading or burning a movie. He left the computer on for hours when he was doing that. I didn't think much of it or cared. Then this started happening. Do you think that may have something to do with this situation? We have never used our floppy disk on this computer. I bugged him about it and he doesn't know (and isn't trying to find out) why and how this is happening.

Can you give me more of your thoughts?

Thanks again

Oh just to clarify, I still haven't touched anything. So it already says "Disabled" when I went into the screen.

What you call the black screen is the BIOS POST or Power On Self Test.

If you Disable the Boot-time Diagnostic Screen you should not see this info but only the HP logo. The same process is followed by the computer but you will just not see it. It is probable that an error will automatically trigger the Diagnostic screen. All BIOS are unique. Mine, for example, has that Wait for on error option. You might try the other tabs looking for it. Perhaps in Advanced.

Once again your error is the floppy drive as seen here:

Floppy disk fail (40) or (80) error.

http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000426.htm

If you do not use the floppy drive then you can physically disconnect it or you might be able to disable it in the BIOS Setup.

On the Main screen see if you can highlight Floppy Diskette A and choose Disable.

It is not likely that anything done in Windows would affect the BIOS.

Again this error is a hardware error and it in itself might have triggered the shift to the Diagnostic screen to bring it to your attention.

Great! I'll give that a try.... probably when I finish my assignment in case something really horrible happens when I try the steps you have suggested

Thanks!

No problem. Let us know how it goes.

If you decide to open the computer please read this first:

http://www.d-a-l.com/articles/library/72.html