Black Screen on start-up in regular and safe mode

I recently came home to my computer off and when I went to turn it back on, it started up with a black screen after the windows logo with just the cursor available. Things like ctrl-alt-delete did nothing so I tried booting up in safe mode which ended up with same black screen and cursor.

I then went to search the internet for possible fixes and have done/verified the following:

Used boot CD and ran Start-up repair, told me to remove any mp3 players or USB devices and try starting again, didn't work (nothing was connected in the first place). The start-up repair log appears to identify no problems with the system.

It's not a hardware issue, the drive itself has been checked on another computer and I've already used a new drive and installed a new copy of windows using the same computer.

Not a virus issue, scanned the drive for viruses and did a chkdsk on it, neither of which turned up anything.

Unfortunately there are no restore points saved so I can't just revert to an older profile.

Since I can access the drive on another computer, is there any program I could run to try and fix the problem? This seems to be the only thing that hasn't been covered in other topics similar to this one which I've found online.

This is my last resort so any help that you can provide will be greatly appreciated,
Thanks!

Yes, everything is properly connected. I've already installed a new copy of windows on another drive using the same computer so I'm quite sure that it is not an issue with the hardware configuration.

Hi,

This issue sounds familiar to me, but the fix which i can recall now is reinstalling windows

Basically i think it has something to do with some recent driver installation (Webcam, Scanner or other imaging device drivers are the main culprits).

Try booting onto the machine in command line and try running devmgmnt.msc and uninstall the last installed driver. See if this fixes the problem. You could enter into command line via safe mode or use a Windows 7 startup disc.

Uninstalling the last buggy driver installation should be the goal and the means could be anything; also try attempting other safe mode options such as "last known good configuration" to get inside the os.

The thing is I hadn't installed anything on the computer in a while so I would be surprised if it was a driver related issue. My only guess is it could have something to do with a windows update since the computer, which I usually leave on, was off when this issue started.

Can you provide more details on the devmgmnt.msc troubleshooting?

I've tried the various F8 startup options (low-res, last known good configuration, etc)and all boot up to the same black screen unfortunately.

One other thing that I noticed, the drive currently only has .99 Gbs of free space. Could that cause a problem with startup?

I tried the startup repair loop fix but unfortunately that didn't fix the problem. Are there any other suggestions that I could try?

I noticed that the windows temp folder had several gbs of data so I deleted most of it while accessing the drive from another computer. However when I tried to boot the drive up (which didn't work) and checked it again using the other computer, it's back to .99gb free. My only guess is that the original OS is not recognizing that I deleted anything when I access from another computer? Is it possible for me to delete using the command prompt in advanced recovery options?

This happens periodically to me, running Win7 HomePrem 64 on an Acer. I've come to accept it as periodically annoying. I do a hard shut off, wait a bit, reboot, and get black screen with choice highlighted "Start Windows Normally" which I then do, and boom, I'm fine. Sometimes the black screen wants to do a lengthy check disk, so what choice do I have but wait. I'm posting this so the orig poster knows he's not alone, but I don't think you have to jump through the hoops you've been angsting about. I attritbute it to a Windows/Microsoft problem, something which they wouldn't consider worthy of a fix,so I haven't wanted to waste my time looking for a fix. Am I wrong anyone?