For The Greater Minds: Black Screen w/ White Cursor, Only Different

Hey guys,

Really hope someone will be so kind as to help a beginner who's in a jam. I did a search on the forum and found my problem to be unique. No one else had the black screen/white cursor quite like I do. Everyone else seems to have the ability to choose different ways for booting up. I'm not so lucky however.

On my old refurbished Dell Inspiron 1150, the screen just froze the other day while I was on the web. I help the power button and turned it off. When I try to turn it back on, I get a black screen with a white cursor and nothing else. When I say nothing else, I mean I can hear the comp booting up, but see nothing, no options to start in safe mode, etc. I'm totally clueless on what to do.

As an aside, I would really not like to lose any of my stuff on the hard drive, and I have sworn to myself if I can resurrect this comp, the next thing I'm doing is driving to the store and getting an external hard drive to back it all up.

So please, I am asking some of the greater minds on this forum if they can help me get this laptop going once again.

Thanks!
Patrick

 

Hi Patrick, Try a Quick Boot Disk and let's see where it leads. It will provide substitute bootloader files to determine if yours are missing or corrupt. It will also give you an easier way to perform a Safe mode boot.

 

Patrick,
Pete has it right, but I would try the option for, "Last Known Configuration that Worked" first.

Then go with the Safe Mode. Of recent, there is another post on this message board that deals with repairing/recovery XP that may be helpful.

 

Pete - I do not have even a status bar that shows on the screen. When I turn power on, I immediately get the black screen with white cursor. I have tried pressing the F8 button while I hear it booting, but the screen shows only the black and white cursor still.

Surferdude - I will try to burn the quickboot to a cd now..

Thanks guys for the help so far

 

Surfer does it matter which one I choose on that link you provided?

 

Ahh I believe I've had a breakthrough David, but I do not want to touch anything until you give me the say so...

I just tried to start my computer without the charger plugged in and it worked...I hit F* though and brough up the Windows Advanced Options Menu.

I am leaving his screen til I hear back from you...but if I dont hear anything soon, I will do as Fletch recommeded above.

To bring up a final point which may be relevant, my battery has been terrible and I thought it was dying. I did nothing about this for a while bc I put it on the backburner. It holds little charge and my dell inspiron 1150 blinks yellow 4x then green 1x. I believe that indicates it needs a new battery. Not sure what implications it may have though.

Thanks
Patrick

 

ok...which operating system to start: recovery console or xp home edition

 

ok...the status bar froze on the windows xp startup screen...reboot?

 

ok Pete, seems like after a few times around the status bar, it freezes up.

 

ok trying safe mode (just plain safe mode, not the 2 other choices of w/ command prompt and w/ networking)

and we are on...should i try administator or owner?

 

ok so now what am i looking to do in admin mode

 

Pete - yes when I check the documents of owner it seems it's there and that everything is as it would be (under safe mode anyway). Is there anything I should do now? or try and use it as I normally would?