Black screen of death -help!

Hi there,

First of all, excuse the lack of technical knowledge. I have posted here before and received some great advice so I'm hoping someone can kindly help me again.

I had to do what I believe is called a hard reboot (?) My HP pavillion laptop (vista os) froze when the battery ran out and I ended up having to take the battery out. Since then (last week) my desktop has disapeered. No icons, unable to open control panel or my documents, my computer etc. I tried to do a system restore to last week but that didn't help.

I'm able to open firefox, itunes, HP service things, anything thats not system stuff really. I've got my start menu and tool bar but my battery icon and the little computer/internet connection icon thing isn't there. I've tried looking it up online but I can't find this exact problem nor a real resolution to similar problems, apparently this black screen thing is a really hard thing to sort?

Again, I apologise about the lack of knowledge here but I'm desperate for some help (hopefully in computer laymans terms!)

Many thanks in advance

 

Can get task manager open but when I try to go to explorer it opens for a brief second then disappears into the blackness, same as trying to open my computer/documents etc

 

Don't think I do, just had a look there. Came across a little flyer thing though that says 'restore your system without discs' - if you need to repair your system, you can do it from the hard drive or from your own set of recovery disks.

Would that be referring to windows then? It gives the hp website address on it. Don't think I got a disk with it, laptop came with it on it and thats it I think. Should I have got a disk with it?

 

Ahhhhh no! I've essays and a whole itunes library never backed up! :crybaby

 

Thanks, I'll give it a try. So rubbish though, I've had to ask for an extension on an essay as I can't even save documents, it's gonna take ages to get a disk

Thanks for your help, much more forthcoming with it than anyone at the egg heads cafe was!

 

Ooh you're giving me hope here!

 

How about using Linux to open and grab your stuff first?

 

Don't have Linux unfortunately

 

You can download A Linux Mint ISO file and write it as an image file to a CD/DVD using imgburn or similar burning software. Then boot from the CD and you can access your files. [You will not use the install option but will run directly off the Live CD]

Or you can download the ISO and put it on a USB stick if you have one around using USB Creator. [Again not using the install option but running of the USB]

I believe Linux Mint comes with Open Office so you may actually be able to edit your files using that program.

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I would get your essays first and then you might give this a read through on the Vista black screen.

Because you have some functionality, if you can run msconfig you may try just disabling Windows Event Log under the Services tab, reboot and see if that helps. [I realize you can't use explorer so you would just type msconfig in the Start>Search box, hit enter and see if the window opens.]

If not you could try the Selective Startup and disabling all services but I would get your essays first.