Vista Black Screen Blinking Cursor After logon

[Sandy]

I am the supervisor of a Help Center on a college campus, and work on
students' computers as the students have issues. I don't always know what
happened immediately before the issue appears. This one has me stumped. Here
is the data:
Dell Inspiron 1525 (Celeron)
Vista Home Basic
2GB Ram
Bios Date 6/2008

Problem: Computer boots to logon, accepts password, appears to be loading
Vista, then comes to a black screen with an arrow.

Other: Does the same thing in Safe Mode. Control & Alt & Del do not work

Tried and failed solutions:
Diagnostics - ok
Repair from CD
Chkdsk /r command
Restore to earlier date
Booted to Last Good Configuration
BootRec /rebuildbdc command
Reset Bios
Reseated Memory and switched it around
Booted without Power Cord
Disabled USB in Bios
Disabled 1394 in Bios
Read through Dell Forum

One thing I couldn't get to work was to change the winlogon shell registry
item to explorer, through a command prompt. The path is
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\WIndowsNT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon. I tried to change
the value data frm cmd.exe /k start cmd.exe to Exploer.exe, BUT every time I
restarted the machine it reverted back.

Any ideas? I have the data backed up, ready to do a system restore. Sadly, I
have seen this several times, and would love to find a fix for it.

Thanks to anyone who can help!
Sandy




--
IT Services Help Center

[Richard Urban]

Try tapping F8 just as Vista begins to boot up. This will take you to the
advanced boot option menu.

You can try booting with the last known good configuration. This may get you
in. You can also try again using low resolution booting - in case someone
has set the Window resolution above the capabilities of the video system.

Let us know how it works out.

[Sandy]

Actually, I have tried to use the lower resolution to boot, as well as the
advanced boot options, also, tried selecting the option to ignore the driver
compatibility check with Vista (I don't remember the exact wording.)
Sandy
-

[Andrew Murray]

The list of things he's already tried included that.


Tried and failed solutions:
>> Diagnostics - ok
>> Repair from CD
>> Chkdsk /r command
>> Restore to earlier date
>> Booted to Last Good Configuration ******** <<<<<<<<<
>> BootRec /rebuildbdc command
>> Reset Bios
>> Reseated Memory and switched it around
>> Booted without Power Cord
>> Disabled USB in Bios
>> Disabled 1394 in Bios
>> Read through Dell Forum

[LeeTutor]

Have you tried inserting your Vista installation DVD and running Startup
Repair, as detailed on this page:
'We are sorry for the temporary outage.'
(http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tuto...torial148.html)
How to automatically repair Windows Vista using Startup Repair
What is Startup Repair? This Microsoft page has a great deal more
information about that:
'Windows Vista Help: Startup Repair: frequently asked questions'
(http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Win...f3f351033.mspx)
Windows Help and How-To: Startup Repair: frequently asked questions
Startup Repair is designed to detect operating system startup problems
and troubleshoot any found and correct them with little user
interaction. It can repair problems such as:
- missing or corrupt drivers
- missing or corrupt system files
- missing or corrupt boot configuration settings
- corrupt registry settings
- corrupt disk metadata (master boot record, partition table, or boot
sector.)
When the Startup Repair Tool has taken control, it analyzes startup log
files for clues about the source of the problem and launches diagnostic
tests to determine the cause. If it determines the cause of the failure,
it attempts to fix the problem automatically. After successfully
repairing the problem, it will reboot the system, and notify the user of
the repairs, filing a detailed report in the Windows Vista event log.
If the Startup Repair Tool can identify the cause of the problem, but
can't repair the problem by itself, it will provide access to a set of
tools that you can use to manually troubleshoot the problem further.
One of these is the Bootrec tool described below.
If the Startup Repair Tool cannot identify or repair the problem, it
will roll back the system to the last configuration that was known to
work (Last Known Good Configuration.) Again it will add detailed
information about the problem to the Windows Vista event log.

[LeeTutor]

I think the above (incorrect value at Winlogon in the registry) is your
main problem. If Vista Startup Repair doesn't fix it, then I would bet
that the reason you cannot get the pc to stop reverting back to the
invalid value is that it is still infected by some sort of malware which
has a component in the "Run" keys of the registry to reinstate the bad
Winlogon value. If you can mount the pc hard drive as a secondary on a
working machine, then a virus check and running of such free tools as
SuperAntiSpyware could correct the problem.