Vista boot Stuck on a black screen with a mouse cursor

I upgraded to Vista from XP and everything worked for one month. My kid
resetted the PC and since then Vista does not boot. It passes the boot
screen with the green stripes with Microsoft logo and does not reach the
Vista green screen. It get stuck on a black screen with only mouse cursor
pointer dispalyed.
I tried to boot in safe mode, I tried repair mode without success; it is
stuck the same way as in normal mode.

Please advise what I need to do or how to reinstall from DVD. I tried to
reinstall from DVD and could not pass the product key screen.

Please help, I have run out of any good ideas...

Do you have a printer installed? One morning I tried to boot up and
got stuck on the black screen with a cursor. Called up Dell and we
found out it was the Lexmark printer. It has these flash drives (for
camera memory sticks) and my computer wanted to boot from those.
Strange. Anyway once i removed the printer USB, it boot up fine.

The priter is not connected.

About 3 days ago I got brilliant and installed the 15 language updates I've
been seeing in Update for months. It took all night to install 15 .6 to .8
GB files. The first boot took nearly 40 minutes, which I let run since I
noted the HDD light on solid. I did note an occaisional flicker in the HDD
light so there was hope. At one point it finally brought up the Windows boot
banner followed by a very long period, ~10 minutes, of blank screen with
curosr. But ... it did finish the boot. Even now it takes much lon ger to
boot than pre-brilliance.

Do you see a slight flicker in the HDD light Petr, and ... how long did you
wait during the boot? If this is the case ... I'd give it a good hour.

Now ... does any one know how to remove the scum sucking, pig fart language
updates my brilliance installed? I tried System Restore but the boot is
still dog slow. <sigh> Looks like I'm in for a re-image this weekend ... :(

You should have no problem getting past the Product Key screen whether or
not you enter a product key. Sometimes you need to reformat your hard drive,
reinstall the XP software and then install Vista.

In any event, I would do a clean install of Vista on a reformatted hard
drive. You will have far fewer problems and conflicts.

I have the same problem: both Normal and Safe Mode end up with a blank black
screen with a mouse pointer active. The system is freezed then, it does not
respond to Ctrl+Alt+Del. Repairing with the Vista DVD does not help, I can
only run a command line from the Vista DVD repair menu and access the
filesystem, but I don't know what to do next. I cannot run sfc.

Have you resolved your problem anyhow?

You were right on, virtual dvd/cd drives: They were the cause of my black screen. I think someone mentioned earlier that they couldn't uninstall their virtual drive program because they only had command prompt--Anyway I believe it's possible to run an uninstall file from the command prompt.

My suggestion is to read your manuals or online help. You will find out that
it is a NORMAL behavior. If you leave your machine unattended, not moving
the mouse then depending on the screen saver settings the machine will put
itself in hibernation, and if this period has been long enough after you
came back you will not be able to wake it up with any mouse movements. You
will have to hit the power button just for a second but do not keep pressing
it for a long time. You will get a sign in screen with the globe, I think,
and will have to enter your password again.

It is done for your protection. Being a lone user you may feel it a
necessary drag but in a different environment like a large corporation when
people leave they may get lost in the cafeteria for a long time and some
"noninflammable" characters may sneak in, reset your password or plant a
virus, give himself permissions you won't want to have, etc.

Right, here my opinion on all of this:

Yet again all over the internet we see how many ppl actually know IT in
depth.
(very few).

Regarding this very issue, which seems to be not rare at all, i've seen
numerous solutions however not a single one working!!!

The issue still remains, no one posted ANY answer that would work!!!

In short, the issue as follows:

Windows boots up and shows completely *blank black* screen instead of
the login screen. Mouse cursor is working. *ctrl-alt-del n0tworking*.

It is *most certainly* not a driver issue, as same thing happens in
Safe mode, including Safe mode + command prompt.

It is *most certainly* not a trivial startup misconfiguration issue, as
many suggest. Automatic recovery on vista DVD *does not* find any
problems.

It is not hardware issue per se and booting with Last known hardware
configuration *does not* help.

If ANY of the above doesnt apply to you then you have a different
problem.
I call this particular issue which I saw myself "black screen of
death".

Interesting enough although it might happen due to some windows
updates, however in my case System restore (going as back as three
restore points in the past) didn't do anything to fix the problem.

I used both LiveCD and attaching vista HDD to XP computer.
check disc was run on that Vista drive, however that didn't fix the
problem either.

However I noticed some weird bugs with filesystem when copying the
files in Users folder.

As a working theory I'd suggest that the reason behind the problem is
some file system corruption leading to some mess with security
descriptors or whatever. It might be that windows vista simply cannot
access something in "default user" or "all users" folders or similar
stuff.

In my case I saved all files in Users folder on another computer and
reinstalled Vista on the computer.

P.S. it looks that this issue is rather common with Dell machines (with
preinstalled Vista). No big wonder, their software sucks quite often....

In the MSCONFIG's startup tab following items are active
HD audio control
Windows defender
Synaptics pointing device driver
ConfigFree (TM) Tray
Thoshiba HDD protection
Toshiba Power saver
Thoshiba button support
Toshiba zooming utility
Toshiba flash cards
Antivir workstation
Intel common user interface
PC sync

I work on a domain with close to 400 PC's that we are starting to roll out VISTA. We ran into this issue with the first batch.

After reading some of the posting most of you are probably not running domains, and AC's.

We use login scripts for installing printers, what we determined is, the reason vista was sitting on that black screen was it was waiting for the user to accept the new driver to install the printer. We ran a bunch of tests and determined this was the reason. For those of you not on domains, the best I can tell you is, there is something waiting to be installed.

the temp fix is to login as admin and it should load and prompt you accept the new driver. then the user can login fine. (This will need to be done for every printer that needs a driver installed. Also note our printers are oming form a win 2K3 Server running x86 (32 Bit) drivers and our vista machins are x64 (64 Bit) machines, so we are installing the x64 drivers and that is where we are getting held up.

Again, Most of you have not received this because of printers, but the computer is loading, it is waiting for a user responce to a prompt that you can see. Logging in as admin should allow you to see these prompts. Hope it helped

windows event log seems to be the problem, for the life in me i cant figure out what to do about it, but doesnt affect anything so far, and i can do my work!

started uo in diagnostic mode, shift 5 times, pressed the middle ease of access button
chose a rndom location on my hardrive. Went into windows folder, searched for msconfig, and disabled all startup services, computer didnt restart, so had to shut it down, and on restart worked!

I have this issue on a machine I'd been running approx 4 1/2 mos. Unlike many of you, I can find ABSOLUTELY no way to bring up anything, including a logon, task manager or safe mode. I literally have the black death screen that sits and sits and sits.....

Prior to this, my computer was on much of the time because I also used it as my TV. It would go into and out of sleep mode easily. When this happened back at the beginning of October, I assumed it was a memory issue simply because I'd had an issue brewing. I returned and replaced those sticks but nothing has changed. Obviously that issue was unrelated.

Because I was only looking at the memory, I didn't really note when or why the problem occurred. Since I seldom restarted my computer, I sort of remember a Windows update and restart. There have been others who've experienced this problem in that same time frame. I also don't have the printer "hooked" up, instead plugging it in with a USB cord when needed.

I'd found something on MS about a black screen issue and a file that seems to overwrite the Welcome screen but, since I can't get into the computer to remove the file they were talking about, it doesn't help. MS also the problem was fixed with SP1 but, since my virgin build was installed with Vista Home Prem 64 SP1, this is a lie.

So, how do I fix this when I can't logon, can't pull up the task manager and can't get the computer to boot from the Vista disk?

I got this problem earlier today and it bugged me all day. The screen went black with only the mouse cursor visible. I wasnt able to get the taskmanager to display. My fix was somewhat easy. I pressed F8 during the bootup and went into safemode with command prompt. Although the desktop never showed up the command prompt did. I typed msconfig into the command prompt and the window popped up. I was then able to choose selective startup. Uncheck system services and startup items. Original Boot Configuration should remain checked. The computer restarted a couple of times and I finally saw my desktop again. I uninstalled my nvidia drivers while I was in there since I had recently let Microsoft update them. I also uninstalled anything else I had installed in the past couple of days. I checked normal startup and everything was back to normal the next time I rebooted. Hope this helps someone.

My solution and its not the same for everyone I'm sure.

This solved it for me. Mine actually started with a missing or corrupt winload.exe. After repairing that. I had the black screen with a moveable cursor nothing else worked. chkdsk /r fixes all kinds of XP probs so I tried it. Went through a LOAD of screens, took a couple hours. After this ran is when the blank screen issue started. I could see my hard drive going like crazy when I would get to that point so I knew it was TRYING at least.

Solution for me.
I loaded vista onto another drive I had then booted up and took a look at the other drive. When I double clicked it I had no permissions. I right clicked, when into security and took ownership of everything then I went into the permissions and added the everyone group with full permissions and let it run. Took about 30 mins or so but I have 240 gigs of stuff on there. After that unplugged the new drive, restarted and viola. HOpe that helps someone. If you need help with permissions etc that should be easy enough to google. If you think it's dumb to require some additional hardware then you haven't worked on computers enough. Having a spare hard drive, ram etc is the same as having a screwdriver and hammer around the house.

I've been wrestling with the exact same problem on a Dell Studio 1535
running Vista Home Premium Sp1 for 2 days now and have finally fixed it!
Well...kinda.....

Searching around the net shows that its not a single issue that is
causing this problem for everyone so if what I found doesn't help you
try some of the other solutions.

Like most of you, this laptop loads up fine, and after you login the
Welcome screen comes up for a few seconds as per normal then a
completely black screen comes up....the mouse cursor is there but
nothing else comes up. On this laptop the HD was going bat**** for a
while as well but no matter how long you leave it for it never gets to
the desktop. No combination of key pressing, windows keys works.
Ctrl-Alt-Delete takes you back to that familar screen but selecting task
manager doesn't do anything.

System Restore does not work. Start up repair says everything is A-OK.

After much mucking around I finally got into the system by doing a Safe
Mode with Command Prompt startup. At the prompt I disabled all startup
and services using MSCONFIG. Upon reboot the system booted up fine. Many
hours later I had the system back up and running with all services and
startup items....all except for the Windows Event Log. As soon as you
enable that - BINGO! Black Screen after login.

I did try resetting my ATI graphics back to VGA. The various registry
checks and fixes - all to no avail.

So at the moment, the laptop is bootable and usable....just the Event
Log is disabled.....until I can work out whats going on there.

Well this is what i did folks and it's now working and this on a Dell
Inspiron 1720...
1) could not do any windows updates because of 80073712 error.
2) did all google tricks, still would not update.
3) could not do in place reinstall (greyed out)
4) transfered all settings, tried clean install
5) ran through as per usual on a vista home premium, not sp1 disk.
6) hanged on KSOD
7) googled all tricks shown on here etc etc etc, nothing worked.
8) NOW for What I Did....! :)
9) reinstall procedure upto the point where you can reload drivers, put in
drivers disk for SATA drive, let it install, carry on with rest of
installation procedure.
10) it will go through, even the bit where it says "this takes a moment" !!!
11) you will get to the ksod screen again, where in utter frustration and
cursing micorsoft with every breath, you'll hammer ctrl-alt-del 5 or 6 times
until the computer resets and then does a chksk.
12) this will find a host of errors, including $SII, and will reindex
securit descriptors for about 20 mins.
13) it will then say all fixed, and you know what, the damn thing then gets
to the "input new name" bit.....

I had the same problem with a friends vista laptop, After login black screen with mouse only. Even safe mode was the same.
Finally traced the fault to services,
1. start vista in safe mode with command prompt
2. type msconfig and select diagnostic start up
3. Restart computer. If all has gone well you should able to see your screen
4. Select or find `Services`. In my case all services bar none had been
disabled. It may be labourious but you have to switch them all on again,
Automatic or manual depending on your particular requirements. As an xp
owner i had to switch them on by referring to xp services window. But it
worked and my friend can tweak the services at her leisure now.

A simple solution to resolve this black MS screen follow the below
steps:

1- Run Vista with safe mode command prompt
2- Type “msconfig” and hit Enter key,
3- select “Diagnostic Sartup” option, click on Apply then OK
4- System will ask restart the PC, choose yes,
5- System will start logging off but it will stuck at this stage, force
your PC to shutdown by pressing and holding on the power button until it
is off
6- Start your PC “et Voila” it will work

Note:
- it is possible that some of your services will not start or function
properly (this is an other problem)
- This solution tested on Vista Home Premium 32bit OS

I have seen this problem a few times and have fixed it by removing the UpperFilter and LowerFilter registry keys for the CDROM drive. This won't work for everyone, but it's worth a shot.

This article explains which keys to erase but not how to do them if you can't get into Windows.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929461

What I did was:
1.Boot to the VISTA recovery/repair console (whether off of a DVD/CD or if you can do it straight from the hard drive).
2.Run command prompt from the main menu of the and type "regedit" (without the quotes).
3. Click on the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE once so it is highlighted.
4. Click File, Load Hive. Browse to the "C:\Windows\system32\config" folder and highlight the "system" file (this is the system hive of the registry for the computer) and click Open/OK.
5. Name the hive "sys hive" (it doesn't actually matter what you name it, just don't name it the same as another hive) and hit ok.
6. Navigate to the hive you just created under the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and you will see keys under it called ControlSetxx (xx usually being 1,2,3 or another low #).

Following the Microsoft Article, under each of those keys do the following steps 7-11.
7. Locate, and then click the following registry subkey:
ControlSetxx\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}.
8. In the right pane, right-click UpperFilters (if present), and then click Delete.
9. Click Yes to confirm the removal of the UpperFilters registry entry.
10. In the right pane, right-click LowerFilters (if present), and then click Delete.
11. Click Yes to confirm the removal of the LowerFilters registry entry.
12. Navigate back up so the "sys hive" is highlighted again and click File, Unload Hive.
13. Close regedit and restart the computer.

I keep typing apt-get install Vista, and all I get is :

death@x-x:~$ sudo apt-get install Vista
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
E: Couldn't find package Vista
death@x-x:~$

What the fudge?

Have you ever hit F8 while booting ?
There is no graphical interface or ' reformat ' option.

I'm having the identical black screen problem upon startup however none of the fixes have worked. I've edited multiple hives and still startup is forever black screen and cursor.

I ran into this issue on a customer's machine. There are a lot of theories about what causes this such as a bad driver or a faulty registry entry. Some think its as simple as a screen saver, or bad ram.

If you have data on your PC you must recover and are unable to restore from a backup do the following:

Reset your computer and hold down the F8 key while booting up, you can select the first option. I think it was called "repair computer". This will bring up a graphical interface. If you select DOS Command Prompt option you should still be able to copy files out of your hard drive. Then I would just reformat the computer (last option on the graphical interface). Once you have reformatted, reinstall your programs, and transfer the your files back onto the PC.

The DOS command I used was XCOPY. If you have a portable hard drive you can just plug it into one of the USB ports and backup your whole computer. This might take a while(overnight). To do this you must determine what drive your portable hard drive is. Try using the command: vol e: if that doesn't bring up info about your portable, try j, k, d, and just go through the alphabet until you find it. Then once you know what drive letter it is, type the following to copy the entire c: drive to your portable:
XCOPY /h/i/c/k/e/r/y c:\ e:\"hard drive backup folder"
This will copy the entire c drive. All files, folders, subfolders etc. onto the drive letter e (replace e with the appropriate drive letter).

If you hit the F8 key while booting you get a list of options. With the Vista OS if you select the first option, it brings up a graphical interface. This is what I said previously and it is an accurate statement.

If you are like me, you had a black screen, mouse cursor, and no response from ctrl-alt-del, ctrl-esc, or ctrl-shift-esc.
Some people are able to get to the CLI using safe mode, im happy for you, but that is not the case of this original post. This is for those who cannot get to any kind of command window, or command prompt.

You need your Vista disk, and load the "Repair your computer" option.
load the command prompt and navigate to C:/windows/system32/winevt/

rename the Logs file to something else
ren Logs Logs_isbad

then make a new Logs dir
mkdir Logs

restart. done.

All of this information is very interesting, but to me, ultimately useless. I too have the 'Black screen of death' and cannot get ANY GUI to come up AT ALL. And I mean NONE.

I hit F8, I cannot boot into safe mode (no GUI options or screen of any sort)-still BSOD. I try to boot from the recovery disk, I cannot bring up any options at all. In fact, it shows 'Windows is loading files...' but then goes BSOD once more. I have tried booting from a MS Vista disk-nothing-same result as recovery disk. I cannot boot with a command prompt, because I cannot get a command prompt to come up because nothing will boot AT ALL! (Detecting a pattern here?)

Now, some information about this clusterf#$%. I run an HP Pavillion desktop w/Vista Home Premium. Two things I can remember happening just before Mr. HP decided to go on vacation- 1) had to do an emergency hard shutdown while running Virtual PC (xp on vhd). 2) Computer booted and ran fine after said hard shutdown, but after I finished using it, it remained on until I returned-only to find a blue screen of death (one time-did not get all information from screen since I was going to read dump file when I rebooted... you know the rest). One bit of information I remember on the blue sod was something saying either a BIOSHD(D?) error, or a BOOTHD(D?) error. As this was something that struck me odd, It stuck in my mind.

With the aforementioned info, does anyone have any idea whatsoever what this could be? I am not an IT person by any stretch, but I am fairly knowledgable about things that make windows 'fall-down-go-boom' lol.

Please remember, I cannot boot to a GUI in any form at all, period. So any help with this greek tragedy would be much appreciated!!

Thnx