Black Screen / Hung up on Welcome Scree

My wife and I were given a laptop that was barely used a few months ago and I've just been using it for Word documents for school. 90% of the time it isn't even online because we have more up to date computers that we use.
Here's the problem: one day a window popped up and said windows wasn't responding and when it was closed everything disappeared from the screen except the wallpaper. The computer was rebooted in safe mode and everything seemed to be good. After restarting from safe mode, the cpu got hung up on the "Welcome" screen. Tried ctrl:alt:delete but nothing happened. Rebooted it and now it's just a black screen. Went back into safe mode and restarted from there and it got hung up on the "Welcome" screen again.
So basically, if the cpu is started up normally it just shows a black screen. Safe mode can be run and when restarted from safe mode, the cpu gets hung up on the "Welcome" screen and doesn't respond to anything.
Nothing new has been installed. Like I said, I use itunes to listen to music while i do stuff in Word and Excel for school. I searched online for solutions, and have seen a lot of the same issues with fixes found. I thought I'd start my own thread and start my troubleshooting step by step through here. I appreciate any help or suggestions. thank you in advance.

When you got the laptop, did you check the anti-virus software on it and be sure to do a full scan? If you had it connected to the Internet with no anti-virus present, or a very outdated version, then your laptop could have become infected. Booting up in SAFE mode is almost 95% guaranteed when dealing with a troubled computer, because it's usually malfunctioning programs or drivers that interfere with normal operation, and those are bypassed in SAFE mode. That is, unless your boot sector has been infected.

My suggestion is to create a bootable disk or USB with your healthy computer and include a copy of Malwarebytes. When booting up off the external media, run Malwarebytes to check for anything faulty.

If by chance you don't have a virus, then you should run the SFC scan to repair any faulty system files.

1. Open your start menu and in the search box, type Command Prompt
2. When you see Command Prompt on the list, right-click on it and select Run as administrator
3. When command prompt opens, copy and paste the following commands into it, press enter after each:
   
   sfc /scannow
   
   Wait for this to finish before you continue
   
   findstr /c:"[SR]" %windir%\logs\cbs\cbs.log >%userprofile%\Desktop\sfcdetails.txt
   
   start notepad.exe %userprofile%\Desktop\sfcdetails.txt
   
   
4. This will open a text file with the results of the scan. Please Copy (Ctrl + C) and Paste (Ctrl + V) the contents of this into your next post.

alright. i'll do that as soon as i get home from class

Cytherian said:

When you got the laptop, did you check the anti-virus software on it and be sure to do a full scan? If you had it connected to the Internet with no anti-virus present, or a very outdated version, then your laptop could have become infected. Booting up in SAFE mode is almost 95% guaranteed when dealing with a troubled computer, because it's usually malfunctioning programs or drivers that interfere with normal operation, and those are bypassed in SAFE mode. That is, unless your boot sector has been infected.

My suggestion is to create a bootable disk or USB with your healthy computer and include a copy of Malwarebytes. When booting up off the external media, run Malwarebytes to check for anything faulty.

If by chance you don't have a virus, then you should run the SFC scan to repair any faulty system files.

1. Open your start menu and in the search box, type Command Prompt
2. When you see Command Prompt on the list, right-click on it and select Run as administrator
3. When command prompt opens, copy and paste the following commands into it, press enter after each:
   
   sfc /scannow
   
   Wait for this to finish before you continue
   
   findstr /c:"[SR]" %windir%\logs\cbs\cbs.log >%userprofile%\Desktop\sfcdetails.txt
   
   start notepad.exe %userprofile%\Desktop\sfcdetails.txt
   
   
4. This will open a text file with the results of the scan. Please Copy (Ctrl + C) and Paste (Ctrl + V) the contents of this into your next post.

Click to expand...

The scan went okay. I tried entering the second command and it says:
"Cannot open start
Cannot open notepad........sfcdetails.txt"

I tried entering the first part alone (findstr /c:"[SR]" %windir%\logs\cbs\cbs.log >%userprofile%\Desktop\sfcdetails.txt) and nothing happens. I hit enter and it just moves the cursor down

Tried it again and it says:
"cannot open C:Windows\logs\cbs\cbslog"

Did you run a anti-virus and malware scan while in Safe Mode?

wither 3 said:

Did you run a anti-virus and malware scan while in Safe Mode?

Click to expand...

Yeah. Said everything was all good

I'd even be willing to just wipe it out and restore it back to factory settings. I only have music on it and I have the recovery discs, it is a Toshiba Satellite A205-S5880.

Could I just pop the first disc in (there's two) and run it to do a full recovery?

I can't answer that question since it's specific to your computer. Can't hurt to try it.