Black screen with flashing cursor in upper corner after Dell logo

This is my first time posting here. Please forgive my ignorance, as I'm super not tech-savvy at all.

I'm going to try to explain what's going on as best as I can to see if anyone can throw me a bone here.

I have a Dell Inspiron 531, about 4 years old, and it's worked just fine up until yesterday.

I plugged my Canon camera into the front USB port to grab some photos off of it, when my computer froze. I had to hold down the power button to get it to shut off.

I restarted, and found that after the Dell logo comes up, the screen goes black except for a white cursor that flashes in the upper right hand corner. This has been going on since last night.

The only two options it gives me appear during the Dell logo screen when I can hit either F12 for the boot menu or F2 for startup menu. Once the screen goes black and I see that cursor, key punching does nothing.

I'm not sure if this is worth mentioning but, at one point, I somehow found myself at a memory diagnostics menu and it ran and found no errors but then froze at 99%. I have no idea how I was able to do that, and I can't find it again.

Sorry if I left out any info. Anyone have an idea on what I can do to start troubleshooting?

My CD drive doesn't work. It's not recognizing CDs. Also, I am not able to get into Safe Mode.

Gulp.