Windows 7 won't start up - black screen with white cursor

Hi all,

I was wondering if someone is able to help me try to solve an issue with my laptop. I have a HP laptop running windows 7, and at the moment, I can't get it to start up. It gets past the screen with the windows logo and then just displays a black screen with white cursor. I don't remember recently having installed any updates or any other software which may have caused this. I did, however, go away for the weekend and accidentally left my laptop on standby. When I came home, the battery had drained, so I tried starting it back up and it loaded the 'windows shut down incorrectly' screen. Trying to start windows normally after seeing that screen now won't work. I've tried a few basic fixes:

1. Starting in safe mode - also loads black screen with white cursor
2. Letting the black screen load and pressing ctrl+alt+delete - task manager doesn't start
3. Going to advanced boot options and enabling low resolution video mode
4. System restore - tried restoring to 2 points, one 2 weeks ago, another even older. Both try the restore and then I get an unspecified error (0x8000ffff)
5. A hard reset
6. Pressing F8 on startup and selecting 'restore to last known configuration'.

Any ideas for for what I can try next? The laptop is fairly old but it's the files on it I really care about, so would like to try to fix it, or otherwise, recover my files before doing a clean install.

My laptop came with windows 7 preinstalled on it, but I burnt a series of recovery disks when I got it, and still have those.

HUGE thank you to anyone that can help me!

 

Let's hold off on the recovery disks because they will get you laptop back to the stage it was in when new. If you've had it a few years, then you'd have several years of Windows updates and patches to install.

If you have access to another computer running Windows 7 with the same bit-ness (32 or 64), create a System Repair disk.
Here's how http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/2083-system-repair-disc-create.html

Use that disk by booting from it to repair your laptop.
Instructions http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/681-startup-repair.html