Computer repair assistance requested!

[Eel O'Brian]

So, I'm trying to "fix" a Gateway (lol) laptop for the daughter of a friend.  The problem is that nothing is showing on boot except the mouse cursor over a black screen (can't input anything, you can only move it around the screen).  The OS just isn't loading.  I took a Vista disc over to see if I could do a start-up repair, but it's going dark after the intial "loading files" screen.  I can get to the options to boot in Safe mode, but it still goes dark after the "windows is starting" boot screen.  Bios setup is reading Video BIOS Shadowed and System BIOS Shadowed.  She did tell me she'd downloaded some stuff off some sketchy places before it happened, but I don't think that's it.  Pretty sure it's a hardware problem, but I thought I'd see if anyone here had any suggestions before I told her to take it to a repair shop.

[Brehvolution]

I usually start by unplugging one thing at a time and starting the computer to see if I can find a culprit. Start with the floppy(lol), then cdrom, then any add in cards/ hard drives that aren't the main drive. If you still have a problem, try one stick of RAM at a time.
Also check the board for any blown caps. The look like this:


If that still doesn't work, send them to a local ma and pa computer store and not best buy, staples, or other rip off artists.

Good luck.

[Eel O'Brian]

i'll check, thanks!

hopefully she'll let me take it home with me so i can break it down and look inside

if it's a ram, hdd, or dvd drive problem (the door on the drive is broken), that's an easy fix, but if it is something on the main board it's way out of my league, haha