Black screen after "Starting Windows" and windows logo on screen

[400workstation]

I just was given an HP Pavillion Elite m9040n with a Q6600 CPU, ge force graphics card and two 500GB HDD's.

When I start it up it seems to be ok the HP blue screen comes on goes to OS boot and displays "starting Windows" on the screen along with the windows logo. and then it goes to black with just the cursor on the screen. (Vista) So I know BIOS is ok, graphics are ok windows starting. 

I went into F11 system HP recovery and it seems to think all is well......Very confused any Ideas?

Thanks Glenn...

[WAWood · Accepted solution]

400workstation

Sounds like one or more of the boot loader files got corrupted.

You will need access to a working PC for this step in order to create the media needed to repair your PC boot loader.

You will need to create something known as a Win7 Repair CD. This will repair the boot loader files, and if that is the problem, your PC will boot OK after that.  Yeah, this is for Win7, but Vista uses the same bootloader, so you can use Win7 to repair the Vista boot loader files.

The file you need can be obtained (for a fee) from this link:  http://neosmart.net/blog/2009/windows-7-system-repair-discs/

When you download this file, it will be an ISO file.

To make a bootable CD from it, you will need to download and install ImgBurn: http://www.imgburn.com/

Once you have that installed, run it, select the option "Write image file to disc" and select the ISO file you downloaded, and point it to a blank CD.

To make a bootable USB stick from it, you will need to download and install RUFUS: https://rufus.akeo.ie/

Once you have that, run it, in the Device entry, use the pulldown to select the USB stick.  Down near the bottom right, where is says "Create a bootable disk using", select the ISO file you downloaded.
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Boot from the media you created, and follow the directions in this link: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/681-startup-repair.html

You will probably have to run Startup Repair three times for it to fix all the boot loader problems.

When done, your PC should boot OK.

If it does not, then some OS files also got corrupted and the only way to fix that would be to do a system recovery -- which, if F11 does not work, would require restoring the PC to its original condition using Recovery Media.

Problem there is that HP no longer carries Recovery Media for Vista PCs, so you would have to check to see if these sites still have it: http://www.computersurgeons.com/  and http://www.restoredisks.com/

Good Luck
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[400workstation]

wow now thats is very  detailed advice! thanks for your time! I will do that and I'll let you know how it goes...

Thanks again .,Glenn

[WAWood]

OK ... If my post helped you, please click the Thumbs-Up symbol on my post to say thanks.