Black Screen and Mouse Cursor after Windows XP Splash

[egrantXP]

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 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 managerâ€
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 modeâ€, 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.

 

[egrantXP]

Sorry about second posting... said there was an error with first attempt! How
would one delete postings?

 

[Elmo]

Sorry about second posting... said there was an error with first attempt! How
would one delete postings?

It seldom works anymore; the feature has been removed from most servers
due to abuse.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

It seldom works anymore; the feature has been removed from most servers
due to abuse.

And even if he were to succeed in removing a post from his server, by
the time he did it, the message would have been propagated to many
other servers. So deleting a message is generally useless.

 

[egrantXP]

Trouble-shooting (cont.): I was not able to access a console in "safe mode"
but I was able to access the console in recovery mode. I tried doing the
following without any success:

1. In the recovery console, I ran "chkdsk /p" and that returned that errors
were indeed found (do not know if they were fixed or how to fix). Then ran
"fixboot" and restarted. Same black screen appeared upon restart.

2. In the recovery console, I ran "bootcfg /rebuild", set my identifier as
"Windows XP Pro" and set this as the default with "bootcfg /default", and
then restarted. Same black screen appeared upon restart. How would one go
about deleting this? I did not see a "bootcfg /remove" anywhere.

3. In the recovery console, I ran "fixmbr" and then restarted. Same black
screen appeared upon restart.

4. Since "Safe mode with console" does not work, I tried running
"C:/WINDOWS/system32/restore/rstrui.ese" with the system restore console to
see if "System Restore" could be launched, however, this command (as it said)
was not recognized. I guess this recovery console has very limited capability.

5. I have the old HD that originally came with the computer, so I hooked it
up as the "master drive" and the new one as the "slave drive". I was able to
then run the Western Digital diagnostic software that came with the new HD,
the quick test came back as "Passed". I started the extended test, however,
it indicated that it would take approx. 30 hours.

5. (cont.) I was able to open the new HD to view most the files after
booting from old HD, however, "My Documents" is password protected and I am
not sure how to access them as of yet.

Thoughts:

 

[egrantXP]

Trouble-shooting (cont. 2): I have learned that by running "chkdsk \r" it
will not only try to find the errors (as with "chkdsk \p") but will also
attempt to fix these errors. I have run this command a total of 3 times now,
each stating that "...one or more errors have been found and fixed", implying
that there is something wrong and chkdsk cannot has not been able to fix it.

I also went ahead and tried a solution posted on:

"http://www.aitechsolutions.net/winxpnoboot.html"

This site outlines step-by-step instructions on how to manually restore the
Windows XP registry to a bootable configuration. I followed these steps up to
the point were it assumes (in a hopeful manner) that the Windows XP "Welcome
Screen" appears at long last. These steps, however, did not solve my black
screen issue indicating that it is either another problem (in addition to
corrupt registries) or just simply that there are one or more other problems.

Thoughts: I think my next course of action will be to run the "Extended
Diagnostic Test" through the Western Digital software in order to see if it
can fix things that "chkdsk" could not, and then repeat some of the other
discussed steps.

If this does not work, I think it will be time for a fresh re-install. It is
hard to believe that simply canceling a Windows update could cause this much
trouble.

 

[egrantXP]

Trouble-shooting (cont. 3): Ran the Western Digital "Extended Diagnostic
Test" and the disk did not have errors. Ended up just wiping the HD and
re-installing XP Pro (luckily I was able to get my data off, at least).

After re-installing XP, I noticed that some of the Microsoft updates would
only install just after the Windows XP splash screen, but before XP actually
booted up. During this part of the installation, the screen turned blue and
indicated something about the setup continuing (the same screen I had seen
earlier after the XP splash screen and before the everlasting black screen).
The only difference about this time was that the black screen lasted about
5-10 seconds before showing the "Welcome" page.

Thoughts: It looks like even though I had canceled the Microsoft Updates,
there may have been some boot-up file(s) that had been changed to tell the
computer to install more updates after restarting. However, since I had
canceled the updates, the computer just hung because it had been told to
install updates when there were not any to install.