Vista loads to blank screen w/ mouse pointer

J

JordanCL

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
May 26, 2006
Messages
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I am taking a look at a Dell laptop for a friend. They were 'downloading' iTunes (i'm not sure if they were actually downloading or trying to install iTunes) and their laptop froze. On restart they got the 'computer was not shut down correctly' menu, and starting up in safe mode (w/ command prompt or w/ networking or normally) brings a blank screen with just the mouse pointer visible.

The mouse pointer responds to touchpad movement. The windows splash screen shows, and when the screen saver comes on it is visible. This means it is not a graphics issue. Ctrl-Alt-Delete and Ctrl-Shift-ESC have no effect.

I have seen several posts about this online but with no real solution for the ones that the task manager is not accessible.

Any Ideas?


Laptop is a Dell Inspiron 1525. OS is Vista. I have the recovery disk and am able to load repair features and a command prompt.

I have tried onboard hardware diagnostics, system restore, last known good configuration, and hooking up to an external monitor.
 
I'd just save on time and backup what is needed and reformat.
 
insert vista oem cd or and get into repair present vista. it actually works sometimes.
 
try hooking up an external lcd, maybe they hit presentation mode and its outputting video to the vga instead of the lcd.

long shot, but seen it happen alot of times.
 
Roliath said:
try hooking up an external lcd, maybe they hit presentation mode and its outputting video to the vga instead of the lcd.

long shot, but seen it happen alot of times.
Click to expand...

+1

try to find switching screen button

FN+number
 
Just to update everyone, the first things I did were on-board diagnostics (dell), repair through vista disc, system restore through vista disc, and connected to an external monitor (Fn+F8 btw).

Nothing worked. Luckily the laptop was basically BRAND NEW (why they asked me to fix it I'm not sure).. so the owner didn't care one way or the other about a reformat / fresh install, so that's what I did.

I'm really surprised about how often this issue was brought up online with no resolution though -- I'll be sticking to XP for a while yet.
 
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