win xp black screen on start up. Mouse pointer works, nothing else.

[josh]

Computer was on, strange xp window came up, may have been some sort of
scan disk program. Text was scrolling by so fast that I couldnt read
it. I thought I caught the word "deleting" at the beginning so I
turned off the modem and computer. When I rebooted, without the modem
on, the same screen came up. After rebooting a few times with same
result I let the program run it's course, after which the computer
rebooted on it's own. Once it got past the xp startup screen the
monitor went black. Then the mouse pointer appeared on the black
screen, and was moveable. I left the computer on for a while and it
never made it beyond the black screen. I unplugged everything, left
it off all night and tried again in the morning. No luck, same
problem. I can get into the bios, and the hard drives are still
recognized, do I need to reformat the drives or is there a way i can
salvage the data on them?

 

[Patrick Keenan]

Computer was on, strange xp window came up, may have been some sort of
scan disk program. Text was scrolling by so fast that I couldnt read
it. I thought I caught the word "deleting" at the beginning so I
turned off the modem and computer. When I rebooted, without the modem
on, the same screen came up. After rebooting a few times with same
result I let the program run it's course, after which the computer
rebooted on it's own. Once it got past the xp startup screen the
monitor went black. Then the mouse pointer appeared on the black
screen, and was moveable. I left the computer on for a while and it
never made it beyond the black screen. I unplugged everything, left
it off all night and tried again in the morning. No luck, same
problem. I can get into the bios, and the hard drives are still
recognized, do I need to reformat the drives or is there a way i can
salvage the data on them?

Try booting from the CD and running a repair install.

HTH
-pk