Windows Vista - blank screen with funny symbol and cursor

[helppleease]

Hi i have a Toshiba Satellite laptop with windows vista and when i try to start it up it goes to a blank screen with a funny symbol (ascii 187 box building character? It looks like this " ╗ ") and a cursor that is flashing (like an underscore). When i try to push any buttons it beeps. I may have stopped the computer in the middle of a system restore (i wasn't sure what it was doing) :s Is there any way to save it?

P.S. I've already tried:

Take out the battery and hold the power button for 60 seconds.

Press f8 (nothing)

Press f12 (it went to a boot menu with options 1. HDD 2. FDD 3. CD/DVD 4. LAN and 5. USB Memory, but when i tried to choose an option it went to the same blank screen with the funny symbol)

Thank you so much.

[Orlando]

That is very common problem today with many users. It is named as "black Screen with blinking cursor". If you search this in Google you will get more than 1000 results. Anyways, there are many causes for this issue. Might be Ram or any other hardware fault, or if any unsuitable changes made in BIOS. What i can suggest you is, just checkout these threads. Hope you will get helped:
If you have a black screen or a blinking cursor at first boot
boot stuck on black screen with cursor pointer
Black screen with flashing cursor on start-up in HP mini 110 Notebook
Black screen with flashing cursor on start-up in HP mini 110 Notebook