Screen went black, All I see is the cursor

CLH1784,

What is the exact message you are getting.
What changed right before this started?

My father-in-law has recently reported the same problem on his Dell Dimension 3620. He packed it up and sent it to me to look at and I am a little stumped on this one.

He, too, does not remember updating or installing new software prior to the computer locking up. He was checking mail using Outlook Express shortly before the problem occurred.

The machine boots up with the Windows XP Home Edition Splash Screen as expected. The screen goes to all black with the exception of a white standard cursor. The resolution of the screen appears to be 640 x 480 based on the size of the cursor. The cursor is movable on the screen.

It acts as though Windows XP is loaded and running. However, we are unable to see the screen. The same problem occurs when booting in Safe Mode and Last Know Good. Attempting an 'in-place' upgrade of XP Home Edition does not change the situation at all.

I have started up with the Install CD and ran Recovery Console. The 'chkdsk' command did not find anything to fix. 'fixmbr' produces an error message stating that the Master Boot Record is damaged or non-standard in some way but I am not sure that is a correct message.

In every other way, the machines appears to be operating normally except the black screen.

Any thoughts? I'd like to be able to boot it so I could back it up and then restore the entire software image.

Thanks,

Mitch

These MS KB articles might help

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=314503

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=308041

I am quite familiar with both of these excellent Microsoft KnowledgeBase Articles.

The first, Q314503, is not applicable to the problem we are experiencing. Q314503 applies to an issue where the Windows XP Home Edition splash screen never appears in the boot process.

Instead, we see the splash screen and after it disappears (as normal), it appears the appropriate amount of time transpires for a standard boot process before we see our white cursor. It really acts as though everything else is ok but that the video display system is displaying a black screen.

The second, Q308041, has a excellent set of steps for resolving boot problems. I have exhausted each of the steps to no avail.

Any other thoughts? Is there a list of config files that control video display system that could be deleted to see if they repair the issue?

Thanks,

Mitch

After trying many of the steps that you did and unsuccessful calls to Dell, we finally dropped our computer off at a repair center this morning.

I will update you with their diagnosis if it works.

I ran out of time. My in-laws wanted their computer back. So, I removed the hard drive and installed it temporarily in another Windows XP machine. I created a new folder called 'Backup' and copied all the files/folders into that folder. Then, I reinstalled the hard drive back into the original computer and installed Windows XP Home Edition from scratch.

Problem solved.

However, I strongly suspect that the problem was caused by corrupted video display driver or config file. If I could have delete the specific ones, I suspect that the machine would have default to the Microsoft driver and would have allowed us to boot the machine.

Good luck with the repair.

Thanks to everyone for the comments/input.

Mitch Strickland