Black screen

Hello,

I have a problem where the screen turns black with a mouse on it before windows vista even loads the login screen, and this is also the case for safe mode.
I've tried looking for fixes but they most involve logging in, but I can't even do that.

My laptop is a toshiba satellite, with 2GB of ram and I think 160GB harddrive, other than that I don't know much else about it.

Any help would be appreciated, thanks.

There are multiple reasons for the Black Screen error (also known as the Black Screen of Death). Quite frankly it's very painful to try and fix - and most attempts take several weeks and are still unsuccessful.

That being said, the most common fix is to use Startup Repair to enter System Restore and restore your system to a date well before the problem started happening. To enter Startup Repair there should be a "Repair your computer" option above the Safe Mode selection options.

If you don't have that, then try this post to create a Startup Repair disk for your system: How to Make a Windows Vista Repair Disk If You Don’t Have One - How-To Geek