Windows Vista boot screen not showing

random123

Distinguished Member
I am running Windows Vista on an acer aspire 5720. Previously I got the message "System Volume Disk is Corrupt" and I managed to sort that out but now the login screen is not showing, its just staying black. I can see the mouse cursor and thats it. Any Ideas, I am a total noob at computers so help would be appreciated
 
Hi Random,
If you have a Vista DVD, boot from it, select "repair my computer" / "repair startup" and boot again.
Repeat this process (probably 2 or 3 times) until Vista boots without the aid of the DVD.
If you don't have a DVD, you can download one which contains the recovery facility from the wiki.
 
Terry, I don't think that would do the trick - his computer is booting, but it's not getting to the logon screen.

Better option would be to use the System Restore feature from the bootable DVD, maybe?
 
Yes, sorry CG, (or more properly sorry Random !)
I never have a logon screen for Vista or XP (or ME come to that). I always organize it that the system comes straight up without going through that multiple-user business, so when I see "logon" I just think of booting the system, and I'm afraid I'm guilty of seeing what I thought, instead of what I read.
Guru's quite right Random. If you're getting a normal boot up to where you'd normally get a logon screen, you don't need to "repair startup", but use the other option on the same page to select a system restore point from when everything was still working properly.

Don't worry if you've already seen and acted upon my previous advice. You won't have done any harm. If there's nothing broken, it won't fix it.
 
Last edited:
I changed the BIOS so it boots CD first and just before the CD Loads, i get a message saying "A disk read error occured, press Ctrl + Alt + Del to restart" and when I press that nothing happens, any ideas?
A system restore did not work as it says a system restore point has not been created (my fault entirely", is there any alternative solution
 
Last edited:
Sounds like you're going to need to reinstall Vista if you have a DVD, or do a factory restore from your recovery partition if you have one. The documentation that came with the PC should explain the procedure.
If you have personal data on the HDD which you haven't backed up, you could remove the HDD and try accessing it from another working system to copy your personal stuff first. If you can't do that, it's back to square 1 and a vanilla copy of Vista.
 
Last edited:
Does this message display while your CD is spinning or before?

Is it possible the CD is scratched or the CD drive is damaged?
 
I managed to get rid of the disk read error message? When I run start-up repair, it says boot is successful, system restore does not work as I have not made a restore point. Can I manually repair the boot using cmd? I have no idea how to do it so can somebody tell me?
 
There is no help that can be offered. You said yourself that it wont boot and the restore wont work. There is no repair feature in Vista. Will have to reinstall.
 
I thought we'd already decided it's not a broken boot that's your problem, it's a broken Vista.
The recovery DVD will have nothing to fix in the boot, and no restore point to go back to.
One last thing you could try, is to install the HDD in another PC if that's possible, copy your private data, and do a chkdsk on the HDD it to see if repairing duff blocks will get you past your hang-up when you try it back in your own PC.
Otherwise it's re-install Vista from scratch, recreate your private data, and make sure you turn on system restore and institute a backup policy to external media for your private files in future, to protect you from any similar future problems.
 
Hey, its me again. I tried a linux live cd and also a windows xp usb stick and they both load fine but when it try access my files, it only lets me access whats on the cd/usb not what is actually on the harddrive, i just want to try back-up my files safely if possible, any ideas?
thanks
 
Back
Top