Black screen of death

[wlsnoops]

Compaw Presario A900 Laptop with Vista 32 bit

I am working on a friends laptop that had the dreaded "bootmgr" error msg. I was able to run the system repair option as well as run "bootrec /fixboot" from the command prompt. After the restart, Vista appears to be loading, but all I'm left with is a black screen with a movable mouse pointer. The pointer moves around normally, but there is nothing else on the screen.

I get the same result when booting into safe mode.

 

[digitalvivo]

hey at the black screen can you ctrl+shift+esc?

If task manager comes up try RUN>New task...type "explorer.exe" hit enter

Post back please

 

[wlsnoops]

I tried that earlier, but it didn't work for me.

 

[xxnideoo]

I think your harddisk is broken.
Replace it.

 

[wlsnoops]

Umm, no the hard disk is not broken. Chkdsk revealed no problems.

As I was under the gun to get the laptop back up and running, I took the easy way out and reinstalled Vista. I really wanted to find a solution to the problem without going this route, but everything I Googled and tried wouldn't work.

As is well now and doing the happy dance. Thanks for the replies.