When I start up my laptop (Dell 9400), after the Dell screen, the Windows screen loads. Then right as it would load windows, the background is a black screen with a cursor (able to move it with the mouse). I tried doing "Last Known Config", if I go into Safe Mode it does the same thing. I did a diagnostic with nothing coming up. Tried taing the battery out. Help!
Reinstall the OS using a disk. Recover using a disk. Use Gnome partitioning boot-up utility (you gota download and burn it to a disc). Your filesystem is totally corrupt.
try repairing the the OS first... it doesnt give BSOD or errors during startup so the booting and the bootmgr are fine. A repair should fix everything.
My bet is a blown hard drive. If you can start from CD or USB drive, scan your boot drive for errors. You can also check hard drive health using 'configure system' while booting (F12 I think for Dell notebooks) and enter BIOS. You should see a hard drive. My guess is that you won't.
So before I had this problem, a while ago, there was this error after I turned on the computer. I can't remember but some file was missing, it was the first thing that came up. It seemed like a system file. Since then the message hasn't appeared then proceeded to boot Dell, Windows pages. I can enter BIOS, and I think I saw the HD. I'll check again. I did a diagnostic (F12) and it didn't find much.