After Windows XP boot screen the screen becomes totally black and only the cursor is visible.
I have a Toshiba A65-S126 running Windows XP Home. It won’t boot up anymore. It shows the Windows XP boot up screen when I turn it on, but instead of showing the log in screen, the screen becomes totally black, and only the mouse cursor is visible. I can move the mouse cursor around, but it doesn’t respond to any clicks. Do you know what could be the problem?
It looks like that is a software problem. Apparently the video driver is corrupted or something else is going wrong with the software. You can try the following troubleshooting and repair steps:
1. Try to boot the laptop using Last Know Good Configuration option from the boot menu. To access the boot menu restart the laptop and press F8 a few times when Toshiba welcome screen appears. Navigate to the Last Know Good Configuration line using arrow keys and press enter.
2. If the method 1 doesn’t help, start the laptop in Safe Mode (from the same boot menu). When you start the laptop in the safe mode, only a basic video driver would be loaded. If you can boot to the desktop, most likely the video driver is corrupted and should be reinstalled. Uninstall the driver and restart the laptop in the normal mode (the laptop will start with a basic video driver). Go to Toshiba website, download the video driver for your model and install it.
3. Here is one more option for restoring the system back to normal. Boot is the safe mode and run the system restore utility. This utility will help you to revert the operating system back in time. You can use this utility only if it wasn’t disabled before. To access the system restore follow the path: Start-All Programs-Accessories-System Tools-System Restore.
It is also possible that you are experiencing a hardware failure. You problem you described might occur when the hard drive is failing and the operating system cannot load because of bad sectors on the HDD.
June 11th, 2006 at 9:47 pm
I tried the Last Known Good configuration option, and it still shows a blank screen. I also tried to start it in Safe Mode. It shows a screen with the text “safe mode” at the right and left bottom corners and text describing the version of my windows at the top of the screen, and it just hangs there.
I guess my next step is to buy a new hard drive and see if it works. Is there anything I need to be aware of before I replace the hard drive?
June 11th, 2006 at 10:12 pm
You do not have to buy a new hard drive right now. Most likely your operating system is corrupted and you can get the laptop back to work after you re-image the drive. It is very easy to do if you still have an original Toshiba restore DVD disk. In most cases you get a restore DVD or CDs when you buy a laptop.
To re-image the drive you have to do next:
1. Turn on the laptop and insert the recovery DVD disk into the DVD drive.
2. Restart the laptop and press on F12 to access the menu of boot devices. Chose to boot from CD/DVD drive. After that the laptop will boot from the recovery DVD drive and you have to follow the instructions.
NOTE: when you run a restore DVD everything will be erased from the hard drive and it would be taken back to original factory defaults, it would be the way when you bought the laptop.
If you have any important data on the hard drive – pictures, documents, music, etc. you must back it up before you re-image the drive. The easiest way to transfer your data from a laptop hard drive is to use an external USB enclosure for laptop hard drives. You can buy this enclosure in any computer shop for $20-$30. Install the hard drive inside the enclosure and connect it to a working computer using USB cable. Transfer all important data.
June 28th, 2006 at 4:30 pm
I got the same problem. The problem is during a repair install windows made my C drive becomes G drive. All registry changed reference to G. I did offline registry edit to make windows location from G:\windows to C:\windows but did not change all other references so the boot find windows installation but not able to load desktop, favorites, etc…and only get a mouse pointer with blank screen…. I will use offline registry edit to change all references from G: to C: so windows can find everything else…