Vista Black Screen w/ Cursor

[goombawaho]

Vista won't boot to desktop. It just stops with a black screen and anice mouse cursor. Tried booting to command prompt and running CHKDSK /F - nothing major found. Ran scan of hard drive as a slave drive and found/cleaned a few bits of malware but Vista still won't boot.

Is there any sure-fire way of curing this? I see a lot of posts on the internet but not many successes other than reloading Vista.

I knew there was a reason I hadn't gone to Vista YET.

 

[IllogicallyLogical]

Will Vista finish booting in Safe Mode? If you have your Vista installation CD you could try to use some of the "System Recovery Options" available via the 'Repair your computer' feature. You could try the 'System Restore' option to restore your computer to a date when this did not occur or try out the 'Startup Repair' option to try and fix problems that are keeping your computer from completely booting.

- How to automatically repair Windows Vista using Startup Repair

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/tutorial148.html

Joey
CCNA, MCSA 2003, MCP, A+, Network+, Wireless#

 

[JockMullin]

Are you getting as far as the login screen, or is it failing before that point?

This symptom seems to have a number of possible causes including hardware, malware and file corruption.

There is a repair procedure outlined here for one set of circumstances - tho I doubt it is universally applicable:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com.../thread/213997fa-95c5-4530-ab19-7e9e50924816/

That thread also has links to relevant KB articles.

Jock

 

[goombawaho]

Won't boot to desktop in ANY mode. Ran spyware scan on hard drive as a slave drive and removed some stuff - no difference. Ran chkdsk on drive as well - no problems found.

You can't get to the desktop and you can't use Alt/Ctrl/Del to start task manager either.

The article above social.technet.microsoft.com...... did NOT help because the registry entry was NOT screwed up like in that article.

Startup repair found NO problems and there are no restore points so I couldn't go that way (probably because I booted it as a slave drive in an XP system which would whack all the restore points (because of this

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/926185).

 

[BadBigBen]

It just stops with a black screen and anice mouse cursor.

sounds like EXPLORER.EXE has not loaded properly or is corrupt...

try this: Boot into the command prompt again, and run SFC /SCANNOW ...

alternatively you could run an Upgrade Install from the DVD, it has the same effect as XP's Inplace Upgrade Install aka Repair Install...

Ben

"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."

How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.

 

[firewolfrl]

I am betting its a registry hive issue.
I have to research the fix and don't have time to do it right now for you
here is a google searth that you can follow for now to see if you can find the issue

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...creen+with+cursor&aq=0&oq=vista+boot+to+black

I am betting that you may beable to restore from the system volume file...but that takes a separate computer and time.
good luck and post if you find the fix on the first link

I would back up all your data to another computer first before you do anything

 

[linney]

Have you tried some of these?

Windows XP Recovery Console Equivalents in Windows Vista

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/dd367881.aspx

 

[goombawaho]

Alas - I can't try anything else because I had to use the integrated system recovery function on the laptop's hard drive and get the thing back to the owner.

I will however look at your options so I'll better understand Vista troubleshooting. I've got XP down but I need to get going on Vista.

Thanks for the responses. I'll ask if I have a question on your responses.

 

[goombawaho]

BadBigBen - can I run an Upgrade Install from the DVD as you suggested IF I have a Vista Home Premium RETAIL UPGRADE DVD and it doesn't match the version that's installed on the computer (likely an OEM version of Vista Basic/Vista Home Premium)??

In other words, can you do the repair install from a non-matching DVD?? Otherwise, I have to start collecting Vista DVDs......

 

[BadBigBen]

I believe so... as far as I remember, all VISTA DVD's are bit wise the same, the only diff is the KEY used, which turns it into Ultimate, Business, or what have you...

personally, I have not tried that, may try it on my install of VISTA just as an educational thing to do... and if I bork it, then I will let you all know...



Ben

"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."

How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.

 

[goombawaho]

Yeah - please report back your findings so I know whether I need exact DVDs.

With XP, if you do a fresh install from a HOME CD, it's going to expect a HOME key code, but I've honestly never tried to do a switcheroo and use a different CD to REPAIR XP just because I have both CDs with me at all times.

But with Vista, there are like 12 flavors of DVDs.

 

[BadBigBen]

With XP, the CD's are ALL different, and you will muck up the install, this I know for sure...

I will let you all know later on today...

Ben

"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."

How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.

 

[TheRogueWolf]

I have exactly the same problem and, as above, initially suspected a corrupt registry user profile. In fact, this is the second time this has happened and the last time I created a new user profile to resolve the problem (System Restore does not resolve the issue).

However, I have since discovered that although the issue occurs if I log straight into the affected (admin-level) user account it does not occur if I log into a different account first then switch users and log into the affected account.

This suggests to me that Windows is attempting to do something which it is failing to do when logging straight into the affected account but which completes successfully when logging into a different account first.

@GOOMBAWAHO: can you see if the same thing happens on your machine?

Can anybody suggest some initial trouble-shooting steps?

 

[TheRogueWolf]

Sorry Goombawaho, I've just re-read the posts and noticed that you don't have the machine any more.

 

[goombawaho]

This seems to be the type of problem that doesn't have a straight-forward fix that works every time.

 

[TheRogueWolf]

Yes, it will no doubt turn out to be something obscure. I'm assuming that it can't be driver related as I would expect a safe mode boot to work if that was the case.

I'm hoping that someone here might have encountered, and come up with a solution to, the same problem.

 

[goombawaho]

The intrawebz aren't helping much. I looked at various solutions but none of them seemed to match when I looked at the "fix" vs. what I saw on that laptop.

 

[PRPhx]

I've had this exact problem. Turn on the pc. Normal POST. And then nothing but a blank screen and a cursor. SOMETIMES< just letting it set there, it WILL boot. Other times, I'm in a hurry and I simply power off the pc, wait 15-20 seconds, then turn it back on and it's good to go. I wonder if at times if a USB device hasn't been removed properly, or a driver hasn't hung. Have never had to re-install Vista, or do a repair to get it to work again.

 

[goombawaho]

That's not a solution - that's an "I hope the problem won't happen again". This is a real problem that's happening to a lot of people and it would be nice if we could find a good fix.

 

[PRPhx]

Might not be a solution. but at least it works. And that's what I care about, especially in light of the fact there are no other solutions. Does your event logs show any problem or error????