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#1
Black Screen with Blinking Cursor
Hello and sorry for the generic title:
Recently my computer closed all programs and continued to shut off. When it came back on, it was able to get past the Dell Logo Screen but could not continue to the login screen, instead it loaded a Black Screen with a Blinking "underscore" cursor on the Top Left-hand of the screen.
Prior to this, a process called "svchost.exe" used an abundancy of memory and caused my computer to lag very badly, I found that while "svchost.exe" is a commonly used, important Windows process, many viruses and trojans can disguise themselves by naming their process this. I used a program called "Process Explorer" to ultimately "Suspend" the Process right before it used alot of memory, and I was able to use my computer without problems from then on.
While trying to solve my Black Screen issue, I found a Thread on the hp forums that had a similar, if not exact, replica of my issue. The link is here:
Black Screen w/ Blinking Cursor - HP Support Forum - 1330837
I thought it was weird that with the Black Screen I had, I only had to press the Power Button once to turn my computer off, rather than hold it down. Ultimately, I followed DavidPK's solution, created a Windows 7 Recovery Disc, and as I was trying to presumeably reset or rebuild my BCD, I found that my Black Screen issue had not been solved.
Overall, I still believe the issue is due exclusively to the svchost.exe that plagued my computer with high memory usage, if I can just get into my computer, even with safe mode, I'm pretty sure I can look further into deleting whatever is causing the process.
Also, I'm not sure if this is important, but it might be: About a week ago my computer as well shut down and restarted, this time getting to the login screen and then coming up with a Blue Screen that lasted for 2 seconds and then it shut down my computer. I found that the issue was something called "SoftThinks" was starting on my computer which caused the Blue Screen, I merely stopped the process from starting which ended the issue, and I'm -pretty- sure it could not have caused this Black Screen.
If anyone has any ideas or suggestions, let me know! I've installed the latest drivers and I believe the BIOS is fine for my desktop computer, I'm almost 100% positive the Black Screen is -not- due to any Hardware Problems. Thank you so much for your time!
Sincerely, Trace