Dell Blank Screen but still shows cursor
 

:uhoh:

Every time I turn my Dell Inspiron on, the log in screen comes on fine and I can log in.

It shows "Welcome" while it loads, but then the cursor comes up and nothing else! It's non responsive, just a black screen :confused: No background, menu bar, icons, nothing.

I tried turning it on with Safe Mode and Command Prompt. Then, Command Prompt shows up and all, but that's it, it's still a black screen. CP is responsive and recognises commands.

All I can do is hold down the power button to turn it off :ugh:

Please help :*

C.

Those of us who are old enough will remember that before BSOD meant "blue screen of death" it meant "black screen of death", which was a black screen with a cursor.

Of course this was in character mode, and the cursor was a flashing underline cursor not a mouse cursor, and the cause appeared to be that the Windows for Workgroups 3.11 protocols didn't like sharing a wire with Novell Netware.

It seems unlikely that this is what you're seeing, unless you're in some sort of time warp, so it sounds like you've discovered a brand new "black screen of death" for the new century! Congratulations!

Bleep codes
 

I have had some fun with a Dell recently - Are there bleeps before you get the black screen of death. Its called Power On Self Test. POST for Short. You will need a working PC to check.

See this link for ideas

BiosCentral - Dell BIOS Post Codes

CAT III

I'm not certain if this will help or not, as you may not be able to see the prompts to follow. How to start the System Restore tool by using the safe mode option with the Command prompt in Windows XP

Hey guys,

Thanks for the advice. I fixed it myself in the end.

After many attempts of trying, I managed to get the task manager up on Safe Mode and noticed Explorer wasn't running! So I felt a bit stupid and started Explorer, to find it all works now! YAAAAAY :D

Thanks :)

That begs the question as to why wasn't explorer running :E

That's what I was thinking, but it's working fine now. It launches Explorer every time I turn it on now, which is promising :P