I have a HP/Compaq presario v4000 notebook and it recently started going
very slow. I'm using XP Home if that helps any. I reformatted the hard
drive, but it is still slow and often freezes or fails to boot correctly.
Sometimes it will give me a black screen right after Windows starts loading.
Somebody told me this may be a BIOS problem, and I tried restoring default
settings for BIOS and it even froze there!! I haven't changed any hardware
lately, and its not in warranty. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Look for a BIOS update. This will require you to Flash your bios which is very crutial you do everything correctly, or you might make your computer inaccessable. First get the Bios Update, it should come with a program built in that will ask if you want to do a backup of your current bios. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO THE BACKUP! And whatever you do, DONT RESTART IN THE MIDDLE OF THE UPDATE. This will make your computer go splat.

Have you made a backup of all your documents, photos, music, etc.

SEE PREVIOUS POST

Murphys Law of computing: No backups, computer go boom...