Black screen with mouse cursor

[ZK99]

I have a laptop with Vista Home Premium 32-bit. I was using chkdisk and now it will not boot anymore. It only goes so far as to have a black screen and a mouse cursor. If I leave it like that it will eventually reboot and then comes back to the black screen with the mouse cursor. I was wondering if it is possible to repair my system without reinstalling the entire operating system. I don't have a CD or DVD, just a recovery partition.

 

[richc46]

Welcome
It sounds like you may have a hard drive problem. Can you boot in safe mode?

 

[ZK99]

Welcome
It sounds like you may have a hard drive problem. Can you boot in safe mode?

No, it is not a hard drive failure. I have a dual boot set up and it boots to Linux just fine. I guess I will have to a restore then.

 

[kinghthood]

You can restore the computer but ensure that all data is backed up, also make sure that you run the built-in Diagnostics to check if hardware is running fine.

 

[Madhur B]

Hi ZK99,

As richc46 mentioned boot to safe mode and check if you are able to login to safe mode.

If yes, then try to clean boot to check if would work, providing the link to do a clean boot for reference: How to perform a clean boot to troubleshoot a problem in Windows Vista or Windows 7

If no, run the built-in diagnostics provided by the manufacturer on the computer to check if the hard drive is working fine.

Please post back with the results.

 

[ehjay]

I'm going to hijack this post if that's alright.

I'm also having a black screen w/cursor problem. It seems to occur after updating the "Update for Windows Vista (KB27-----)" files. There are 4 of them and all of them cause this problem. Safe mode boots the same way as well. The only option I've found to get things working again is to just restore my computer from before I've updated.

Any solutions at all?

Cheers guys,
Andrew.

 

[Madhur B]

Hi Andrew,

We can try to do a start-up repair and check if the issue gets resolved. Please use the following link for detailed instructions:
http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/91467-startup-repair.html

If the issue persists, you can also hide the updates which are causing the problem. Please use the following link for detailed instructions:
http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/72491-windows-update.html

Please post back with the results.

 

[ehjay]

Hey thanks for the reply. I have once done the statup repair. I think it said there were no errors or something like that.

I think I will just hide the updates. I didn't know you could do that. Thank you for your help.

I've read a lot of people having the black screen issue. What has caused this for people in the past?

Thanks again,
Andrew.

 

[Madhur B]

Hi ehjay,

The blinking cursor when the computer starts can happen due to many reasons; one of them could be that updates might cause instability to the Operating System.

Please reply if you have any further questions.