Black screen with white cursor after log in

[B_S2]

My laptop is a few years old and today after I log in I get a black screen with a white cursor. I've read a few threads on forums and have tried taking battery out & pressing on button for 30secs-2mins (tried twice). I can access everything ok in Safe Mode, so did a malware bites scan & registry clean-up. No maleware was found and I restarted but still same black screen appears when logging in normal mode. I've tried to access Advanced tab in BIOS to do hardware test but I don't have that tab. I'm running out of ideas. Please help

[WAWood · Accepted solution]

B_S2

Hello;

Allow me to welcome you to the HP forums!

Since it works OK in safe mode, then it's SOMETHING that is being loaded at startup that is trashing the display.  Could be a runtime program; could be drivers, could be a Service.

No easy way to tell.

Boot into safe mode, enter MSCONFIG in the start area.  When that opens, disable ALL the start items. Reboot.

If the PC now works, it's one (or more) of those items -- and you have to go through a tedious process of re-enabling them one at a time until the PC fails again.  The last one you re-enabled was the problem.

Here's a tutorial on how to do this: http://www.howtogeek.com/74523/how-to-disable-startup-programs-in-windows/

If the PC still does not run right with all the startup items disabled, then go back into msconfig and select the Services tab.  Check the box to hide the MS services.  Then, disable the upper half of the Services.  Reboot.

If problem is fixed, then you have to go through a tedious process of re-enabling one Service at a time until you find the one that is the problem.

If the problem is not fixed, then disable the other half of the services.  Repeat as above.

No easy way to do this ...

Good Luck

[B_S2]

Thanks for your quick response. I'll give that a go when I have a spare few hours. 

[B_S2]

Thank you it is now working again. It seemed to be both the WLAN Auto config and Windows Management Instrumentation services causing the problem. 

[WAWood]

Glad to see you got it working again.

Please indicate your thanks as indicated in my signature.