Black screen of Horror

Hey everyone,

I have a Toshiba Satellite L305 with Windows Vista. It had been running slow for about a day before the trouble started. It started running very slowly so I tried a reboot. After starting, all Windows programs started shutting down and finally the whole system. The next boot brought on a black screen. The black screen does not have a cursor. I am able to access Safe Mode, but I have had to repair my profile twice. Restore points and restoring to last good boot did not work. I tried to restore Windows, but one of the disks I backed up to isn't working. I really don't want to lose everything if I don't have to. I have spent some time Googling the problem which led me to do a scan from the command line and I found nothing major there. I also attempted some kind of Windows reset after which I was able to get to the desktop again for a minute but my profile could not be loaded. I tried to fix it which required a reboot and back to a black screen. Any help is much appreciated. Thank you!

 

Do you get an all black screen while in Safe Mode too? Or does everything load properly in safe mode?

 

First, check the cooling fan. Put the PC up to your ear or feel if there is air flowing out of the vent. If the fan isn't working, stop using the PC immediately. A bad fan will cause the CPU and/or on-board graphics to overheat and a $200-$300 repair.

If this isn't the case, the best bet for attempting to get back your data is to have someone who is tech savvy pull the hard drive from your PC, attach it to a working PC and copy your files (documents, music, pictures, etc.) from it. While the drive is hooked up to the other PC, a disk test (such as Western Digital's Data Lifeguard or Seagate's SeaTools) should also be run to check the drive's health.

Hope this helps.

 

Everything does run properly in safe mode and the fan is running. My issue with finding a tech savvy person to help me is that I really don't have the money. I guess I will have to find it if there is no other way. Thank you so much for the suggestion!

 

Bad video driver would be the first thing to check. When you go into safe mode, Windows loads a default vga driver, not the driver for the video chipset. Try doing an uninstall on the video driver, then go from there.

 

When you're in Safe Mode, try the following:

Start > run > msconfig > *press ENTER*
In the "system configuration" box that appears > click the Startup tab > click the Disable all button
>> Now click the Services tab > place a checkmark in Hide all Microsoft services > Now click the Disable all button
Now click OK to save changes and exit.
Reboot your PC (to normal mode)
See if same problem persists.

 

Thank you very much for the responses. I am writing this from my normal desktop after disabling all start up programs. It seems to be running pretty slowly and is pausing often, but this is the first time I have actually been able to access the desktop in normal mode since yesterday. I had already disabled some of the start up programs but not the services. So now, I should enable 1 by 1 until I find the program that is causing the problem and remove or repair, correct? Do you think the slow speed is related? Thanks again!

 

Exactly.

 

Thank you so much!!