black screen with blinking cursor - vista

Hi there,

I did not think I'd be back on this forum so soon. You guys are awesome on here and helped me fix a virus fairly recently so I know my system is clean. I have:

Windows Vista
Running on 32 bit Operating System
Intel Core 2 Duo CPU E6550 @ 2.33 GHz (if any of that is helpful)

I don't know if that's helpful, but thought I'd post it. So I turned my computer on this morning, checked my Facebook and the weather. I closed the browser and walked away. Then I remembered I needed to look at something so I went back and clicked Firefox. Sometimes it doesn't load if I don't hit Run As Administrator so I just clicked IE instead from my shortcut on the bottom bar of the screen. Well, the computer started making a funny noise - kind of like the ticking of a clock. It loaded IE to my homepage, but froze and wouldn't let me click anything. Then it gave me a script error of some sort for Firefox. I tried to cancel but it seemed to only anger my computer and it wouldn't let me do anything but move my mouse. I tried Ctrl+Alt+Delete and nothing happened. Then I got an Authentication Failure where my only choice was to click ok. I did. The system choked up but I left it alone. Eventually I got my Windows screen back, but then I couldn't get into IE or Firefox. It still had the weird ticking sound. I tried to shut down, but everything I did only made it choke up like it was trying to freeze. Eventually I got it to log me off as the user to the blue screen like the computer is locked. I knew if I went back in, the whole thing might freeze so from there, I selected to shut down.

The system tried and tried to shut down, but never would get there. I gave it over 20 minutes, trying to wait for a shut down that never happened. It got to the blue screen stating shutting down, but would not go past it. Finally, I turned it off by pressing the button on the CPU. I tried to turn it back on. It loads the main black screen that says Dell, but the drops me to a black screen with a blinking cursor at the top. I tried hitting F8 at the Dell screen but nothing happens. It just drops me to that same black screen with the blinking cursor.

This has happened to me before and I got it fixed, but I'm hoping that this might be something I can do myself.
Please help me! I take classes online and need my computer back as we are in our last week. Is there anything I can do?

Thank you!

 

Oh I should have mentioned, I reviewed the similiar cases, but it doesn't look like it was solved in those instances (unless I don't understand something).

Please help, I'm desperate to fix it.

 

Greetings, SweetLD215.

Just read through your recent Malware thread - was a pleasure to watch y'all work together.

The clicking sound could indicate impending hard drive failure. I would strongly suggest backing up any important data to an external device asap.

Meanwhile, log in as an administrator, click Start, Computer, right click on your root drive, click Properties - in the Tools tab, click 'Check now...' in the Error-checking section.

Let that run, report back with the results, and we'll go from there.

 

Hi Caliban,

Thanks so much for responding! Yes, the person helping me through the malware was absolutely amazing and patient!
This might be a silly question, but how do I get the computer to actually start up so I can follow those steps? I tried hitting F8 to go to safe mode, but it doesn't work.

I am praying it isn't hard drive failure or... if it is that I can go rescue my important stuff before it dies.

 

Ah, sorry.

Do you have a valid Windows disk or OEM recovery disk? If so, set your boot order to 'CD first', and boot to the CD. If that's possible, select the 'Repair your computer' option - a good tutorial is located here.

If you don't have a disk, or if the above fails, let us know.

 

Hi there,

I'll look around to see if I can find the CD. I'm not sure if I have one. If I do find it, will it erase all my stuff by booting up this way?

 

The Repair option shouldn't affect your files.

However, if you have important data on the machine that you feel should be saved, you might consider creating a live Linux disk so you can try to salvage your files in case of machine failure. One of the easier distros is Linux Mint - the procedure would be to download the 32-bit version, burn that file as an .iso to a CD, and boot to that disk, creating a live environment from which you can manipulate your data.

Do try to find your Vista disk, though.

 

If you do have the ability to download .iso files and burn them to disk, download UBCD - it contains good startup utilities that we can help you with.