Boot to blank screen

[Yamaki]

I'm having a strange issue with RC1 x32 on my Dell XPS M1330. Everything was working fine a few days ago. It's a relatively fresh install (all I have is avast, itunes, firefox). Now when I boot all I get is a blank screen with a mouse in the center. There's hard drive activity, and I can move the mouse, but I can't login. I've tried typing my password and hitting enter to no avail. Also tried sleep cycling it, no luck.

I think it might be related to a driver called zFlashpoint that I just installed for my SSD. It's been rumored to corrupt parts of the registry. Does anyone have an idea how I can fix this if it's the case? I have a desktop which I can put the SSD in to perform repairs.

 

[johngalt]

Only thing I can suggest is to try a DVD startup repair, or else a System Restore.

 

[Yamaki]

Tried both. Apparently I had no restore points, and startup repair found no problems.

 

[johngalt]

You might be SOL unless you an use Safe mode to uninstall the driver...

but if it corrupted the registry, that might be done and over with without a System Restore....

 

[Uber Philf]

Ive had this problem 3 times, formatted and started fresh 3 times, ive learnt my lesson, this is caused by something being removed from the registry, i kept using a registry cleaner, and after every time i did, id get what youve described as the black screen with moving mouse and no loggin..

System restore can help you here, unfortunately id turned mine off, so i was screwed..

GL

Enzo.

 

[Ag3ntC00p3r]

I have been going nuts with this same problem since moving from Win 7 Beta build 7000 32bit to Win 7 RC 64bit. At first I could have sworn the issue was the NVIDIA pre release driver for my GTX260 but after installing 32bit on another HDD I was having the same issue.

I tried Sys Restores from Safe Mode and I couldn't even complete them unless I booted back into Safe Mode after the Sys Restore. But even after the successful Sys Restore I would be right back to the black screen at startup.

Turns out it was a problem with a HD-DVD or Blu-ray disk in my LG HD-DVD/BR combo drive. Every time I would start up fresh or restart and if I left a HD-DVD or BR disk in the drive I would get the black screen after the Win 7 startup animation. I would always get the mouse arrow in the middle of the screen. Sometimes I could move it, sometimes I could not, but no matter how long I left it there I could not get to the desktop.

Now, as long as the drive is empty I have no problem with the black screen at startup with either 32 or 64bit Win 7 RC.