Dell Inspiron 1501, black screen with mouse, safe mode doesn't work either?

Question

I start up my Dell Inspiron 1501, and everything loads up fine until you get to the desktop, and what comes up is a black screen with the mouse cursor, which you are able to move around...it seems like everything is working fine besides that, because when I click around with the mouse, it seems like it's loading stuff, because the blue circle working icon comes up next to the mouse...I tried going into safe mode with the command prompts, to type in "msconfig", but safe mode doesn't seem to work either...I also attempted to startup from the CD with the operating system, but it didn't work, unless I just did it wrong...if anyone has any other solutions besides the safe mode with command prompts, please let me know! Thank you so much in advance!!
-Amanda

Answer 1

I'm not sure I understand, but is there any words at all or just totally black screen? Also, when you are hitting F8 to start in safe mode are you continuing to hit it until the black screen comes up? And if you are booting from a cd you will probably have to change the boot order so that the cd drive is checked first, but you can't do that if you can't get into the system. I don't know anything about going into safe mode through command prompts. You reboot the system and keep hitting F8 until it comes up. Hope this helps.

Answer 2

Try hitting Ctrl-Alt-Del, and then click on the Task Manager button. Then, click on File => New, and type "explorer.exe" and hit Enter. This should hopefully bring up your Start menu and desktop icons.



After you do this, I'd recommend you do a full spyware / virus scan, as some of these can cause this type of anomalous behavior.



Once all is fixed, I suggest you use a backup tool like Acronis True Image to take a "snapshot" of the hard drive in case of future problems.

Answer 3

that stands out as the right component to do first, use the disk that come from dell that asserts working gadget, run the disk and there's a restore abode windows determination. Run that determination no imformation would be lost on you pc. If this dont artwork there could be a means furnish concern or a hardware concern. try this generally used and record the reults back here.