Windows 7 Home premium - Black screen with mouse cursor

[ClickRight]

Windows VISTA Home premium - Black screen with mouse cursor

Ok, so I have a clients Dell desktop in (sorry I don't have the work order in front of me at the moment so I don't have the model.) It boots up past the loading bars then sits at a black desktop with only a mouse cursor. You can't Ctrl+alt+del, open the task manager, nothing! Safe mode doesn't work either.

Last time I saw this issue it was a registry problem and it was just a matter of doing a system restore. This PC has no system restore points. I even tried to pull an older copy of the registry from 2009 in the system32/config folder, but that didn't work.

I tried doing a repair install of Vista, but the "Upgrade" option is grayed out. Any suggestions on what I can do, this is very frustraing and the client doesn't have all their software so they don't want to format.

 

[kagman]

The few times it happened to me was when the computer was hit with a ton of viruses. Just ended up restoring the computer back to factory settings.. But in this case I know its not a real option for you. Have you checked for viruses and stuff...

 

[JD1248]

Fought this battle last week. Tried everything found through googling, nothing works. You will have to format and reinstall.

 

[iisjman07]

I tried doing a repair install of Vista

?

I've seen 'chkdsk /r' fix this a couple of times but from the information available on TechNibble, it can be caused by many issues

 

[kagman]

I just tell people that its just windows.. deal with it lol..... just kidding..

 

[ClickRight]

Sorry for taking so long to respond, I was CRAZY busy, but it's just totally slowed down now Anyways, after hours of registry edits, log deleting, Chkdsk, NTFSFIX, and finally doing a mass permission change using icacls, I managed to get in! But things were not well - service startup errors, program errors, etc. And the machine was just dog slow. In the end we ended up just doing a format and reinstall

 

[Alan22]

Glad you got it fixed, but something is bothering me. In the title it states Windows 7 Home premium, but then in the post you state you tried doing a repair install of Vista, but the "Upgrade" option is grayed out.

1 - You cannot upgrade from Windows 7 to Vista.
2 - You cannot repair a Windows 7 installation with a Vista disc.
3 - A repair install is not the same as performing an upgrade.

So, I'm a bit confused as to what you were originally trying to do.

Which OS did you end up installing?

 

[ClickRight]

Glad you got it fixed, but something is bothering me. In the title it states Windows 7 Home premium, but then in the post you state you tried doing a repair install of Vista, but the "Upgrade" option is grayed out.

1 - You cannot upgrade from Windows 7 to Vista.
2 - You cannot repair a Windows 7 installation with a Vista disc.
3 - A repair install is not the same as performing an upgrade.

So, I'm a bit confused as to what you were originally trying to do.

Which OS did you end up installing?

Ah, so sorry, I meant to say Windows Vista. To do a repair install in Vista, you choose the upgarde option. Which, unfortunately does not work when you boot from the DVD; you have to be able to boot Vista to use it.

 

[Alan22]

Ah, so sorry, I meant to say Windows Vista. To do a repair install in Vista, you choose the upgarde option. Which, unfortunately does not work when you boot from the DVD; you have to be able to boot Vista to use it.

Gotcha, thanks so much for the clarification

 

[MHCG]

I had this problem on a Vista machine and on a Windows 7 machine. Nothing I did helped, I ended pulling user data off and reloading.

 

[ClickRight]

I had this problem on a Vista machine and on a Windows 7 machine. Nothing I did helped, I ended pulling user data off and reloading.

Yeah, that seems to be the general consensus, and most likely what I'll do next time. Doing a LOT of research online, it seems that only those that had corrupt log files or a registry error were able to recover properly.