Blank Screen with cursor but no log on screen

I've been using my laptop for a while now and had a friend install Windows 7 onto it (because i'm quite rubbish with this sort of thing) and everything has been going great until a few weeks ago.

I loaded it up one day and everything is going fine until it reaches the part where it's supposed to load the log on screen. Instead of a log on screen all i am getting is a black screen with the cursor. Now i can't give you specs to my computer or anything of the like because i simply don't have access to it but i can give as much aid as possible to help find the problem.

One of the things that happens is that when the black screen & cursor appears if i move the mouse or push any buttons the screen goes VERY dim as if i've put it into a lower power mode or i've taken out the power cable. If i push the power button to turn it off even if it's just a tap on the button the screen will go off immediatly even if the laptop is still running.

One of the green lights that i believe is showing if the hard drive is busy or not flashes during the process but after a minute or so of the black screen it'll stop flashing altogether.

I've tried all three safe modes with all the same results, F8 to system repair has given me no love with startup repair finding NOTHING wrong, memory check running through the process only for the same thing to happen and system restore has no restore points to go to.

I've looked for answers in several places and some say i have to use sticky keys to get the screen to come on but the problem is that as of last nights use i turned sticky keys off for a few minutes so i could play a game and forgot to turn them back on afterwards. I've taken a look around the net and can't find a fix to my problem. Reinstall simply is not an option under my current circumstances so i really need a favourable reply.

Thank you in advance.

Edit: I apologise this seems to be in the wrong section.

If you use Restore Points, have you exported one to a USB or CD?

I would try that and recover where you last were. It seems odd that this would just happen so suddenly, do you know of any recent changes that took place on the machine? New hardware or software? Updates?

As a last resort you can try and reboot the system and boot from a CD with a 3rd party OS bootable by USB or CD, create a new partition, and then copy any files you need to that partition. Wipe out the affected partition and try installing a fresh OS.

Rayl said:

I loaded it up one day and everything is going fine until it reaches the part where it's supposed to load the log on screen. Instead of a log on screen all i am getting is a black screen with the cursor. Now i can't give you specs to my computer or anything of the like because i simply don't have access to it but i can give as much aid as possible to help find the problem.

One of the things that happens is that when the black screen & cursor appears if i move the mouse or push any buttons the screen goes VERY dim as if i've put it into a lower power mode or i've taken out the power cable. If i push the power button to turn it off even if it's just a tap on the button the screen will go off immediatly even if the laptop is still running.
.

Hi Rayl!

Welcome to SevenForums!

One quick question, has your friend got the Install DVD? If he has you should try repairing it using that. I'll try and list the steps briefly here.....

1. Put the disk in the drive and restart.
2. When prompted press any key to boot from disk.
3. When you arrive at a screen that says 'Install Now' , 'What to know before installing Windows' and 'Repair Your Computer' choose 'Repair Your Computer'
4. You should arrive at a screen that has two options. Choose the first one and select Windows 7 Ultimate or whatever edition you have installed.
5. Now you should come to a screen with multiple repair options. Choose Start-Up Repair.
6. Your PC should restart itself, this time when it asks you to press any key DO NOT.
7. Check if your computer starts up properly now.

Try this and report back please.

Thanks,
ZeshanA

Unfortunatly he has recently moved house so that he can attend univeristy.

However i tried the method described by Christopher and had no luck getting my files due to various reasons i won't go into HOWEVER i installed XP SP1 (as i had a disc for it) over both as that was the only option open to me. However it has no wireless functions at all but considering this isn't the forum for that i'll thank you all for the assistance and try and fix the problem from here.

Hi, i have the exact same problem.

Did a clean installation of Windows 7 Pro Build 7600 a couple months ago and untill this sunday it has worked perfectly. But when i woke up this sunday, the pc was extremly slow, so i tried to restart it. But after boot, it was still very slow and after the blue log-in page i just a black screen with my cursor on it. All i can do is do "ctrl-alt-delete" to get the task manager thing. Choose restart or shutdown from the buttons here doesnt work.

I have tried ZeshanA recipe. but with noe luck. I've taken the "start-up repair" several times with no luck. Booting in safe mode, low res or any other doesnt make a difference.

Anyone got any ideas? I have some important things on the computer, so dont want to format..

Thanks!

Lanzoni said:

Hi, i have the exact same problem.

Did a clean installation of Windows 7 Pro Build 7600 a couple months ago and untill this sunday it has worked perfectly. But when i woke up this sunday, the pc was extremly slow, so i tried to restart it. But after boot, it was still very slow and after the blue log-in page i just a black screen with my cursor on it. All i can do is do "ctrl-alt-delete" to get the task manager thing. Choose restart or shutdown from the buttons here doesnt work.

I have tried ZeshanA recipe. but with noe luck. I've taken the "start-up repair" several times with no luck. Booting in safe mode, low res or any other doesnt make a difference.

Anyone got any ideas? I have some important things on the computer, so dont want to format..

Thanks!

Hi! Welcome to SevenForums!
I think you should try a repair install which will keep all of your personal files and settings and programs but it will delete all of the Windows System files and then copy back the ones from the install disk. (This is so that it's easy to fix your PC if a Windows System file is corrupt or gets deleted or renamed. I won't go into the instructions here as I'm writing this from my iPhone but Brink ( The Admin ) has done a brilliant Tutorial for it Here: Repair Install JUst follow those instructions and you should be fine!

ZeshanA
Click on the scales above a users post and click "I Approve" if they helped you!

For those of you who are still struggling after some of the suggestions by other users, I have stumbled upon a solution that fixed my issues. I am a system administrator, running xp, visa and win 7 desktops, one day my vista and win 7 machines did the black screen and moving cursor thing. None of the cntrl + alt + dlt things quite worked for me, so I investigated a hard drive that was affected by this virus / malware by putting the hard drive into another machine that was working just perfectly. The thing I have found was that this virus / malware changes permissions and ownership, in vista and win 7 it takes ownership of system files which doesn’t allow you to boot up your machine properly. Windows xp reacts differently to the virus /malware, in win xp it affects your printing, the start toolbar disappears, and the best of all is it affects your ms office, you get weird error messages when opening documents or it doesn’t allow you to open any documents at all. The way I fixed all of my machines, whether it was XP, vista or win 7, was the following method:

Take the hard drive of the affected machine, put it into another machine that is working perfectly, make sure that the other machine has a decent antivirus on ( I used Mcafee) because you have to do a full scan, and after that you go to my computer and right click on the affected machine’s hard drive, go to properties and then the security tab. Now I have seen that mostly it deletes a security group or user so you’ll notice that where all the users and groups are listed, usually there is a user which only consists out of a string of numbers( long string) which indicates that the user or group has been deleted. All you have to do is take ownership of the drive, restore all the default permissions to the drive and replace all the child objects with the ownership and permissions and you are good to go.

This is what the default permissions would look like:
Default permissions:

Administrators Full Control
Creator/Owner Full Control
Everyone Change
System Full Control
Now go to “advanced” button at the bottom of the security tab, this will give you permissions tab, auditing, owner etc. Under the permissions tab, add the default permissions so that it looks similar to the above example, when finished, make sure you tick the “replace permission ……” box at the bottom of the window, this will apply all the permissions right down to all the files and folders and not only to the drive itself. After you have ticked the checkbox, click apply, you’ll see a small window applying permissions to files and folders, this usually takes a while, depends on the amount of data on your hard drive. Once it is done, go to the Owner’s tab, select administrator or administrators , then check the “replace permissions…..” checkbox at the bottom of the window, and press apply, this will give a similar window when applying permissions to files and folders, but this only takes ownership of files and folders. Now once all of this is done, put the hard drive back in the affected pc. Once you start it up, sometimes for some reason it asks you if you want to boot in save mode, if it does, its best to do so although I have booted in normal mode and it still worked anyways.

Hope this helps someone.

So, are you saying that a virus caused this or not? Just happened to my fresh install, really annoying me. Can boot into safe mode so did, installed Avast but it won't run due to side-by-side errors...

I am having the same problem with my desktop computer. It was turned off for about a week, and when I went to turn it on, the computer would not load, restarted and did a CHKDSK. After it completed that, I could not see my login screen. It gave me a blank screen with a moving cursor, no CTRL-ALT-DEL, no sound, just a moving cursor.

I've tried System Restore, and after that all it would do is take me to start up repair every time I tried to boot the computer. It would not find any errors, but tell me "If you have recently added a USB device like a camera/scanner/etc. please remove it and reboot. If this message persists please contact a system administrator or manufacturer." This however is not the case, because the only USB anything that's plugged in is the bluetooth adapter for my keyboard/mouse, which has been in the computer since day 1.

I'm very frustrated... I'm currently scanning the hard drive with my laptop to see if it is infected anywhere.

System specs:

Intel Core i5
Intel DP55KG
4gb RAM
eVGA nVidia GTX 260 OC
750w Power supply
1.5TB Western Digital Cavier HDD.

Any help would be amazing... I don't want to reformat this installation.

I also can't get into windows to be able to do a repair install, or else I would have tried that already. Any other suggestions?