Object Just Black in Shading Tab? I'm new to Blender, and I'm running it on a low-level Windows machine. Intel Core 2 Quad 3.2ghz processor, 12 gb of ram, and an ATI Radeon HD 4300 graphics card. 

I'm really not looking to do any heavy lifting in blender, just some small projects for class. When I make any shape, even a simple UV sphere and click over to the shading tab, my object is all black. I can't figure out why. 

I've run this on my Macbook as well and got the same problem. 

Here's a screenshot:
It's most likely an issue with the shading mode. There are several ways to preview objects in Blender: wireframe, solid, shaded, textured, etc. Try clicking around on these:



Also, in your screenshot, you're in "World" editor mode (in the Shader editor). Make sure your world background isn't pure black/set to 0. If you don't have any lights in the scene, this is the only thing lighting it, and if it's set to 0 or pure black then there is no lighting at all, hence everything is black.