System: Sony Vaio ( PCV-RX752 ), Pentium4 2.0 GHz, 1.50 GB RAM, 320 GB
Western Digital HD
OS: Windows XP Professional (SP3)
Problem: Black screen and mouse cursor after both BIOS and Windows XP Pro
splash screen have finished
Description: I had been running automatic updates (all 5 files downloaded;
~250 MB worth), the install initialization had completed, and the actual
install was beginning to start (or so I thought). It looked like it had hung
(it was likely just slow, as I preformed the same update install on the
machine I am on now) so I “canceled” the install. The “update manager”
canceled the updating process successfully (as well as said that the 5 files
did not install properly, no suprise) and prompted me to restart the
computer. Upon restarting the black screen and mouse cursor appeared… and
that was it.
Trouble-shooting: I first tried to boot in “safe mode”, thinking all I had
to do was redo the update install and all would be well. Booting in any “safe
mode” yielded the same black screen. I looked at some posts and decided to
try to “Repair” my OS. I have the Windows XP Professional CD, so I booted to
this disk and followed the instructions to “Repair” my version of Windows XP.
After the old XP files were deleted and then reinstalled, the computer
restarted, a screen saying the “setup” would continue flashed, and then the
screen went black again.
Thoughts: I wonder if cancelling the update corrupted a registry or
something similar. I also had read something about video cards playing a role
in this problem, which I did not think would be the case. At any rate, I took
out my graphics card and retried the above without success.
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