laptop won't boot fully

[Fletchinator]

I have an Acer laptop that turns on, it gives me time to get into the bios, but after that is says "Prepare to boot OS" and then goes to a black screen with a blinking cursor. I have tried to switch boot priorities and have tried to boot from a disc, but it always goes to that black screen.
What should I do?!

[gwydionwaters]

i have this problem aswell on a ppc, i tried to suspend and now i only get the initial cursor. i can however boot into rescue and get a shell on my system but am not sure what to do to repair the problem. are there parameters to pass to the kernel to skip the resume or boot a safe mode type thing?