Black Screen With Cursor BEFORE Log In


  1. VerlandJ
    Posts : 1
    Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit
       New #1

    Black Screen With Cursor BEFORE Log In


    Hello Sevenforums,

    I have a Sony Vaio VPCSC laptop that I have owned for about four months. In these four months, I have experienced boot issues once before that was resolved by a lucky guess on my part. I have had the blue screen of death about four times before as well. This problem occurred when I was installing a game on my laptop. I had just agreed to the EULA when I went to go turn off my bittorrent. Just then, my computer froze, giving the familiar white-transparent screen with the circular loading cursor. I waited for it to load, and when it didn't, I went off for about thirty minute to do other things to pass the time. When I came back and it was still frozen, I manually shut off the computer. When I booted up again, the Windows Error Recovery screen appeared, after which I selected Start Windows Normally. The Starting Windows animation ran and then afterwards my screen shut off for about three seconds, came back on with solely the black screen and the cursor. After a second the brightness dimmed. I am left with the black screen and the cursor, which occasionally will be the cursor accompanied by the circular loading cursor, much akin to this (http://qt-project.org/doc/qt-4.8/images/cursor-busy.png) but with the Windows 7 cursor. The entire time, my hard drive indicator is lit. Last night I just left the black screen running, and when I woke up, it was the BSOD.

    I restarted and then tried every boot option in the advanced boot options menu. The only one that brings me something besides the black screen is system recovery. In system recovery, Startup Repair runs its course and does nothing, System Restore does nothing because I have no restore points (I know, I know, my bad), System Image Recovery cannot find any system images, Windows Memory Diagnostic simply restarts the computer, and Command Prompt works, seeing as when I click it, it opens.

    So, from my own assumptions, I think my hard drive is shot, which is frustrating since I have only had this laptop for four months. But, I'm not positive about this, and I do hope you all can help. I've already had two prior laptops that had hard drive crashes within the first year. I have looked at the other threads about this, yet none of them have helped me, because I do not own a Windows 7 disc, or any disc of that sort.

    Is there any hope?
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  3. writhziden
    Posts : 11,269
    Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit
       New #2

    You can get into the Recovery Environment (RE) so all hope is not lost. In the RE, open the command prompt.
    1. Type
      diskpart
      and let Diskpart load.
    2. Type
      list disk
      and find the disk number corresponding the disk that your Windows system is on. It should be the only disk with a size attributed to it in a laptop.
    3. Then type
      select disk 0
      assuming your disk number is 0 (mine is).
    4. Now type
      list partition
      and make a note of which partition contains the operating system files (if you know what size your Windows partition is). Also make a note of whether there is a system reserved partition, usually with 100 or 200 MB in size. This is very important to get correct, so if you are not sure, ask us.
    5. If you have a system reserved partition with a size in the 100-200 MB range, choose that partition. Otherwise, choose the partition containing the Windows files.
    6. Type
      select partition 1
      assuming the partition containing the appropriate files is partition 1.
    7. Type
      active
      to mark that partition as active. This signifies that this partition which contains the boot/operating system files is now active.


    Now try running startup repair three times with a reboot between each. Startup Repair - Run 3 Separate Times
    Last edited by writhziden; 10 Mar 2012 at 00:51. Reason: Windows partition or system reserved partition
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  4. gregrocker
    Posts : 50,642
       New #3

    I don't think there's a way to see if Windows files are on a partition in Diskpart. I'd tell them to first choose the 100mb System Reserved partition if present when List Partition, if it's not there choose the WIn7 partition by size to mark Active.

    It's also easier for many to use free Partition Wizard bootable CD to have a picture while doing this. Also after marking Active click on Disk # to highlight it, from DIsk tab click REbuild MBR then Apply - which may preclude the need to Startup Repair x3. I type this out a dozen times per day.
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  6. arxis
    Posts : 2
    Windows 7
       New #4

    Anyone with this black screen with cursor problem, please have a look here:
    Windows 7 black screen with cursor
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