My computer is giving me a black screen

right after i turn my windows hp compaq nx6310 on, i immediately goes to a black screen. the black screen saying that windows did not start successfully. and that a recent hardware or software change may have caused the problem.
it then asks me if i want to start it in safe mode, safe mode with networking, safe mode with command prompt, last good known cinfiguration or start windows normally. yet, none of these work. ANY IDEAS? i think my computer is probably dead, although i hope not. please help!