I left it on overnight to hopefully come back to a working computer, but was greeted with disappointment.
If I lived in Houston I'd do it for free. Come on clutchfans, help this guy out, he'll buy pizza and beer for ya.
Wait... you can see the mouse? Can you press ctrl + alt + del? If so, try starting up the process "explorer.exe" manually. If that doesn't work, get a screen of your running processes and lemme see it.
I just tried it and nothing happens. I did the F8 where I can see the advanced boot options, but after trying all of them, nothing has worked. It just leaves me at that black screen with the mouse after the windows vista screen.
What were you doing the last time it was working? And did you reboot the computer manually the last time you saw it working or did it reboot automatically after doing Windows Updates? Did you install any new software recently?
I was just doing the usual stuff. Clutchfans and Nfl.com. The last time I turned it on when it was working, I had to do it twice. I turned it on and it gave me that black screen after showing that Windows Vista loading screen. I had to manually turn it off and turned it back on and it worked fine. Now all I get is that microsoft corporation screen than it turns black. I don't see the Windows Vista screen anymore before it gets to the desktop. The screen that is supposed to be the desktop is just a black screen where I can see and move my mouse. Sorry if that sounds confusing.
your hard drive might be failing causing it to be unable to load the boot sequence correctly. In any case I'm afraid you would be faced with losing all your data. I would suggest trying to reinstall windows and formatting your HDD first.
Yeah, that I'm fine with because I backed everything up in my laptop at home. I just want this computer working again, so I don't have to keep dragging my laptop to work. I also need it for scheduling and all that good stuff. I'm currently in contact with Dell (another representative) and I'm trying really hard to get that recovery disk. They keep asking me questions to verify I bought it. They asked me the name of person who bought it, what (state) they bought it in, which store did they buy it at. And the only thing I know is they name of the person that bought it. I did buy the business from them, and there is currently no way to get in contact with this guy, so I might be out of luck.
Before you do that... http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ ...try downloading that and running a hard drive check. If that comes up clean, try a memory diagnostic. Just ask me if you need help figuring out what tests to run, because it's better to figure it out yourself than pay to have some other dude do it. Just see if you can figure out what the problem is. And even if the HD is failing, you can probably download this: http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html ...and get SOME of your crap off you hard drive, at least.
Thanks, I'll burn it to a disk tonight and try it tomorrow when I get in to work. Hopefully this works. I'll keep you updated. If it does, I owe you BIG time!! Thanks for all your help. EVERYONE!
Notes on UBCD: For a hard drive check, try using the first one listed (should be F1 under hard drive diagnostics). It works best for a good 80% of hard drives, in my experience. Just do the quick test, and you should get results in < 5 minutes. As far as a memory test... use either version of MemTest, but let it run overnight. It can take some time to find errors.
Most dells have hard drive testing built into the bios. At the 'DELL' splash screen, hit CTRL+ALT+D (not delete). It should run a disk diagnostic and at least tell you if your hard drive is shot or not.
In my experience the one on UBCD is faster, more accurate, and more detailed in its assessment. Honestly I think I've had an on-board HD diagnostic tool tell me something useful like, twice, ever... and I was in desktop support for 5 years. But maybe they've gotten better since, IDK.
OK, I finally had a chance to burn it and run it. I'm just not exactly sure what program to run from the UBCD.
