Sony PC won't boot, it will only display a black screen with a flashing cursor

Hi dmeeren, I opened the PC and checked the cables as you said and it didn't make any difference.  I got in to the system setup and disks are listed there, but there's no mention of any HDD tests that can be performed.  I'll get another disk and will see if that is detected by the XP setup.

Sorry, forgot to ask.

Mr Dmeeren made a very good point in that your problem could be your HDD.  Most, if not all, PCs have a LED to indicate 'disk activity'.  Generally, if you have a disk going bad, you will see this 'HDD Activity LED' on constantly; or when you are 'waiting' for something to happen, this LED will be on - is this the case with your system?

Final note: Depending on the manufacture of your HDD, each manufacture generally keeps a list of HDD tools on their support websites.  You need to be careful to use only READ ONLY tools until you recover your data.

OK Final, Final note: If you are able to boot a CD, you may want to download a disk image utility (i.e. Clonezilla < http://download.cnet.com/Clonezilla/3000-2094_4-10976672.html > to get an image of your system.  This will allow you to re image your disk, or any 'like' disk, and get back to your starting point (I call it my 'Ruby Red Slippers') - which could be very useful in troubleshooting and testing the various suggestions.

Please keep us posted,

Rojosho

Thanks to everyone who has offered help!  So far I have managed to boot the system useing Bart PE, when I use any of the file management tools no disks are listed, I've tried this twice now.  While booting the PC I just noticed some detail about RAID that I've not seen before and I noticed that it said the RAID had failed.  I was pressing keys to get in to the BIOS and this came up, can anyone tell me how I get in to the RAID setup as I may be able to provide you with useful info?  The disks are SATA and I may need the driver, but I can't find this model Sony anywhere, can someone tell me where to get a driver so I can try a rebuild?  safe mode is not available, I'm certain that the system can't see the disks for some reason.  Thanks for the suggestion re disk imaging, I'm not worried about any data on the PC I just want to see if I can rebuild it, or if it is uneconomical to repair.  I've tried disconnecting each disk in turn and trying to boot with one and the only thing I get is a message saying 'No bootable device - Insert boot disk'. I tried a different disk and get the same message.  I hope I've answered everyone questions, over to you.

I Don;t know your raid card, but usually it is CTRL+H (at startup). If you use raid5 you need to find out wich drive is failing, or not been seen and replace it. Then you can rebuild, but how is interely up to the kind of raidcard you are using.

Hi dmeeren, CTRL+H didn't work.  I'll try finding out which raid card is in it, but I'm haiving trouble just finding this model listed, even on the Sony site.

Hi rojosho, CTRL+A,C and H didn't get me in.  At the moment I can't tell you what RAID card is in the PC, all I know is that there are two SATA disks in it.  When the PC boots there are no other messages other than the Sony splash screen.  I only saw the RAID info once and that was when I was randomly hitting keys to try and get in the setup, I must have been lucky that one time.

Thanks guys, I'm awarding the points between you as I feel that you all contributed towards the answer.  I found the RAID drivers but noticed that the XP installtion was incredibly slow, even when I finally got to install the OS both drives weren't listed.  I think I have multiple hardware problems so I'm consigning this one to the bin.  Thanks!

Good Luck Grsq and thank you for the opportunity  :)

Live long and prosper...