Black Screen w/ blinking cursor, system recovery failing.

Hey, I have an HP desktop, model: HPE-150f. I'm running Windows 7 64-bit. Earlier this morning, I booted up, windows was working and I began browsing the Internet for a few minutes. With no warning, my computer restarted and after the blue HP splash screen, I was greeted with a black screen with a blinking cursor in the top-left corner. I powered it down (whenever it is on now, a press of the power button instantly turns it off, previously I had to hold it). I'm unable to access safe mode or the system recovery option on the slplash screen. I am, however, able to access the boot menu, diagnostics and setup options on the splash just fine. Running the HP diagnostic tool yielded no errors.

I burned a repair disk on another computer and accessed the recovery options. Startup repair encountered no problems and told me to unplug any new devices, but only the factory mouse/keyboard are currently plugged in. There were only 5 restore points (and a 6th "undo" option from yesterday) and all of these are currently failing with the error code: 0x800700b7. There is no system image recovery point.

As far as recent activity which could help in discovering the problem, Malwarebytes has been claiming suspicious activity from an "svchost.exe" and upon a scan, apparently found and deleted the issue, restarted the computer, whereupon a disk check took place. I continued using my computer for awhile after and Malwarebytes continued to claim it was blocking suspicious IPs via "svchost.exe". Auto-update tried to restart my computer but I postponed and shut down for the night some time later. This morning, as mentioned, I was able to log-in fine until it automatically restarted on me with no warning. Not sure if this has any relation, but it can't hurt to share.

I've been scouring google searches for a few hours now and have seen some similar and exact issues from others, but the exact matches don't seem to have any solutions. Also, my HP warranty is up and they want $60 just to try and diagnose a problem via phone support.

Sorry for the long read, I wanted to cover as many bases as possible. I'm not really adept with computers, but if anyone has any troubleshooting tips or advice, it would be greatly appreciated. All I can really do is access the system recovery options and the BIOS. I do not have an installation disc available to me currently.

Hello,

Does your computer just randomly reboots or does it show a blue screen known as bsod (blue screen of death) ?.If it does not show a bsod and since you mentioned malwarebytes is reporting suspicious activity in svchost.exe i'm thinking something verry naughty is involved here.

Allthough svchost.exe is a legitimate windows process and messing with it might cause your computer to become unstable it is known that malicious software known as a rootkit can inject itself into svchost.exe and make it look like it's a legitimate process analyzing rootkits is a verry hard job best done by somebody who knows what he's doing i suggest you visit a computer repair shop.Ok that's one thought.....

You mentioned a black screen with a cursor this could indicate that your videob card is somehow failing.This is less serious then a rootkit but still critical.When it happens and your computer reboots do you hear any beeps ?

I'm having the same issue with my dell inspiron 1525...
after installing some program... I forgot whats it called...
a whole bunch of pop ups came up...(obviously its a Virus)
I turned off my computer...installed an anti virus...
turned off...turned on and... black screen, blinking under score (cursor)
I did a clean install with windows 7 64 bits and 32 bits.... (when I get to the step where it says restarting in 10 seconds with the count down)
it would go back to the same step instead of finishing the installation.
I made a repair disk (system recovery cd) with this Laptop 64bits... and Nothing happened.. (it said that it didn't detect any issues...)
I still have the black screen and blinking underscore (cursor)...
I ran the test in the bios and everything is fine...
what should I do?

I'm in IT and a friend brought me her PC after calling Dell and trying everything they asked. In the end, nothing they suggested worked and her PC is a year out of warranty. It's a Dell Studio Desktop and had Windows XP 64bit on it. It has worked fine now for three years, then she turned it on one day and got nothing but the black screen and the flashing cursor in the top, left-hand corner of the screen. I began my investigation by hooking up my monitor, keyboard and mouse to it and nothing else. Same thing occured. Dell logo screen comes up, you're offered F2 for Setup and F12 for Boot Order. I went into Setup and checked/documented settings. Checked boot order and it was correct. Set to factory defaults, restarted. No changes. Ran diags, nothing found. Tried booting with recovery disc. Pressed F12, selected DVD drive, hit any key when prompted to do so to boot from CD and...nothing. It just sat there on the screen telling me to press any key. Tried a new disc and then tried booting with a Windows 7 disc. Same thing. Left my desk for a while and came back to an error indicating DVD drive not setup correctly... Pulled DVD drive, put in another, same thing. Pulled the HDD and put in a new, like Dell computer and got same results. Black screen, flashing cursor, DVD drive not responding. Checked setup, no problems. Put the drive I'd pulled from the new machine in the problematic machine and it booted just fine and the DVD drive worked. I've done a lot of searching and found many hits, same or similar problem. Some to do with USB devices, laptops etc. but several that are exactly like the one I have--but no answers. I did try booting with a bootable USB drive I had and it did boot to it. I could change to C: but could see nothing until I ran attrib -h then I saw autoexec.bat, config.sys, boot.ini. It was a specialized boot device so I did not try running recovery but I will next. I did try putting in a new drive, installing Windows 7 64bit (the DVD drive worked) and then put the old drive in as the seconday. The first time I booted, the old drive was still primary, even though the boot order had been correct and I put the old drive on SATA 3. I ran setup and changed the boot order back to the new drive and rebooted and it is fine. I can now see the old drive as E: and at first only autoexec.bat, config.sys and boot.ini were visable. Changed view files settings and now can see all the files and folders on the drive. It's getting late so I'll try putting the old drive back to primary and booting with USB drive with rescue on it and see if that will correct the issue. What I'm curious about and would like to hear back on is--why did this happen? So many posts with the same issue, various OS--XP, Vista and 7 but most appear to be 64 bit. Maybe I'll know more after booting with USB. At least, if all else fails, I know that the issue is associated with what is on the disc and with the new drive and putting the old drive in as secondary, I can recover her files. I would just hate for the same thing to happen again without knowing why. TIA