Black screen after log in, unable to run Task Manager or any programs

Hi EM1192,

Welcome to the community,

Lets check if this a problem is with the hard drive or not, I would want you to run the daignostics first. Please follow the below link on how to run the test and if you get any error codes, please post back.

http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/kcs/document?docid=DSN_300428&isLegacy=true 

Thanks,

Nikhil 

Hi em1992,

Welcome to the community,

My name is Colin and I work for the Social Media and Community Team at Dell.

As per the information provided by you it is looks like the issue may have been caused due to some recent changes that occurred on the system,

We need to try to isolate what has caused the error to come up.

Let us try a couple of steps.

1. Boot the system in Safe mode.
2. Type msconfig in the start search box after clicking the start button.
3. Select the start tab on the system configuration box and disable the items that are not necessary (3rd party programs).
4. Select the services tab and check the box at the bottom which says Hide all Microsoft services and then uncheck the services that have been left behind and not needed.
5. Create a new user account and try to log in under the regular user account if unable to try logging into the new user account.

We would also need to know how long the computer works in the safe mode  before it freezes.

Kindly let me know if it worked or not.

Thanks and regards,

Colin Fernandes

Certified Dell Social Media and Communities Professional.

Thanks for your reply, Colin.

Safe Mode takes a couple of minutes to load. Once it has loaded, the screen is black with Safe Mode in all corners and the cursor is present. It freezes at random intervals and some freezes last for a couple of minutes. I already tried your msconfig suggestion and nothing changed. I am unable to create a new user and account and when I log in on my normal account, the same problem persists.

Hi, thank you for your reply, DELL-Nikhil M.

I did the test and got this error code:

Error Code 2000-0146 Hard Drive self  test log contains previous errors

Hi em1992,
Thanks for reverting back with the error code.
Its the error code regarding the hard drive that has gone bad. So you might want to consider replacing it.
Here is the link to check if your system is under warranty.
http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/warranty/warranty_information?c=us&l=en&s=gen
and if it is then, please Direct message me with your information like Service Tag of the computer with your First and Last name along with the Address so that we could verify it and proceed with it further.

I did a Factory Restore anyway and it lets me log in, there's no black screen with a cursor, however I ran the PSA Diagnostics again and the hard drive error was still there.

I checked if my system was under warranty and unfortunately it's end date was 05/02/2012

My laptop is a Dell Inspiron N5010, do you know what hard drive I will need?

You may need to purchase the HDD which is SATA 2 and size 5.4, capacity is your choice which ever is compatible.
Below is the best link where you can find the correct hard drive for your laptop.

http://tinyurl.com/7mzm4mf

Revet back for any clarifications.