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#1
Black screen with cursor immediately following Windows logo
This isn't exactly a BSOD problem, but it's a Windows failure nonetheless. It has progressively been getting worse for months.
On my ThinkPad laptop, I have been getting startup failures lately (past 3 months or so out of the laptop's 3-year life). Everything is normal up until the "Starting Windows" page with the shimmering, four-color logo. However, after this disappears and *before* the logon screen, the computer gets stuck at the black screen with the mouse cursor (but no text of any kind, and no spinning blue "thinking" circle next to the cursor). The only way to get out of this is to do a hard shutdown and reboot. The startup process NEVER gets frozen *after* the login screen, even though there is also a black screen with a cursor at this point, and Windows works normally at all other times.
At the beginning it would happen once every 1-2 weeks or so, always on the first boot of the day, and never during a restart, always when booting "from scratch". Furthermore, after powering down, Windows would boot normally on the second try, or occasionally on the third try.
As time went on, it got to the point where sometimes I could not get into Windows unless I performed a System Restore from within Safe Mode. Windows has always been able to start in Safe Mode. It did not matter what restore point I chose, or if any programs or updates had been installed since the restore point--just the mere fact of having System Restore run seemed to fix the problem. Just booting into Safe Mode and then shutting down "cleanly", without running System Restore, did NOT work.
Within the last week or so it has gotten much worse. Now on nearly every startup--including restarts--I get this problem and have to run System Restore to get to the login screen outside Safe Mode. Yes, this means that after restoring to a certain point, then browsing the web or typing documents for a few hours, then shutting down, I would have to restore to that same point *again* for it to work!
Today, after installing a bunch of desperately needed updates, it got even worse--the next time I booted the machine, even System Restore failed to fix the problem, because the restore process would be interrupted every time by stalling at a black screen. While in Safe Mode I read on this forum about the driver verifier, and ran that--this required a reboot, and this time it started up fine!
So to summarize, Windows hangs on startup between the Windows logo and the login screen, and has progressively been doing this more often. The only solution is to "poke" Windows enough by restarting in different random ways until I find a way that it works. Soon I know it will become so corrupted that I won't be able to start it outside Safe Mode at all.
Any help would be appreciated...
I should mention that the battery HAS lost more than half of its capacity. However, this problem is NOT circumvented by removing the battery and starting up with the computer plugged in--therefore I know that the problem isn't a critically low battery. I also occasionally get "Fan Error" messages immediately on powering up the machine--however these are much rarer than the above.