Have a three year old Dell Inspiron laptop that has Windows Vista Home Premium on it, and it has just stared to give me a black screen after log in, with just the mouse cursor showing (and moveable). Web search indicates this was a common problem, but I can't get any command lines or windows to try any of the solutions.

I tried to reboot from the OS cd, but it is not reading the drive and just goes into normal boot mode. I get the blue login screen, the black screen happens after logging in. Anybody got any experience with this?
Thanks

No experience, but is it set to output to a different monitor like when giving a presentation, even though the monitor is not attached? Use to be pressing ctrl-F5 or something like that would rotate through screens.

there is a good possibility you have a update the PC didnt like or you have a form of a virus call Vundu. Can you hit F8 while booting and getting into safe mode with networking?

Not sure about F8, will try it, but when I ran safemode from the initial bootup screen (had to power off, so it gives the option to start normal or safe mode), I still get the black screen after logging in, with safemode in each corner and the moveable cursor.

We just replaced the power charger jack on the circuit board last month, had to take it completely apart to do that, then we reinstalled the OS and ran the updates. It ran good for about a month until this.

I tried to reboot from the OS cd, but it is not reading the drive and just goes into normal boot mode. I get the blue login screen, the black screen happens after logging in. Anybody got any experience with this?
Thanks

Make sure you are changing the boot order to boot from the cd drive. You have to do this in the BIOS. Usually can access Bios by pressing f2 at start-up.

Hi bill, have you gotten your issue resolved yet
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device

I ended up re-installing the OS from the disc. F12 gives me a boot up menu, where I could select boot from CD.

Most of the google info I found was older tech forum topics, seems like you said that it is related to an update that it doesn't like, or possibly a virus, but there was no real clear cut solutions. Some of the posts indicate that the problem eventually re-occurs after re-installing the OS. We'll see what happens, thanks