Often when a computer boots to a black screen with a white cursor it means your hard drive has too many errors to boot properly. Your hard drive is just too error-stricken to get its act together. You’ll need to help it.

If your computer does this and you have an XP Windows machine, you can do what it says in the first How to Fix a Black Screen with White Cursor. Or else you can try this, run Checkdisk from the Windows XP cd Recovery Console:

1. Put your XP Windows Install disk into the optical drive, the CD/DVD drive.
2. Reboot the computer.
3. Some computers will boot off the cd without changing boot order. Just “press any key to boot from the CD” when you see that message. Or you may have to:
4. Set the boot order so the computer boots off the CD, instead of going into ordinary Windows. Some computers are set to boot CDs by default and others have an option to change the boot order temporarily. Look for one of these messages as your computer starts:
5. • Press F12 (or another key) = Boot Menu
   • ESC (or another key) to select boot device
6. If you have to press a key to enter the boot menu , you should now see a selection of the devices your computer can try to boot from. Choose the CD drive and press Enter.
7. When you see the “Press any key” message, your computer is ready to boot from the Windows XP CD. Just press Enter.
8. Your system will now load files and bring you to the Windows Setup screen.


This is the Windows Setup screen

9. Type r to go into the Recovery Console.
10. Once in the Recovery Console you’ll have to pick which Windows installation you would like to log onto. Usually this is C: or 1.
11. You’ll be asked for the Administrator password, the password you picked when you setup Windows the first time. Sometimes this is blank. If you don’t know it, just press Enter.
12. Now you’ll see the command line or C prompt. It’ll look like this C:\Windows>.
13. Type chkdsk /r. (Don’t type the period.)
14. It’ll look like this: C:\Windows>chkdsk /r.
15. Hit Enter.

Checkdisk will now run. It may take a long time, in some cases, a few hours. Usually it finds many errors on a computer that is booting to the black screen with white cursor. When it is finished type exit and hit Enter.

Your computer will now reboot, hopefully into regular Windows.

The other day a client’s Internet Explorer 7 was stuck on the runonce page. She couldn’t get rid of it.

There’s a simple program on Cnet’s download.com that removed it right away. It’s called IE7 Runonce Remover. Click below to download the program.

http://download.cnet.com/IE7-Runonce-Remover/3000-8022_4-10683012.html

To uninstall Norton or any software, usually you can go to Start > Control Panel> Add and Remove Programs. (This means go to the Start button, then to the Control Panel, then to Add and Remove Programs.) On Vista go to Start>Control Panel>Programs. Sometimes it takes awhile for a list of installed software to appear on your screen, but when it does, you can pick the program you want to uninstall. Often you’ll need to restart the computer to completely remove the unwanted program. Most legitimate programs will uninstall this way.

But if that doesn’t work and you are still having difficulty uninstalling Norton Antivirus or any of its products, you can go here and download the Norton Uninstall tool. Ms. Ducktoes has done this hundreds of times and it works well.

I’ve had to uninstall Mcafee Anti-virus products several times in the last week or so. People have let their licenses expire but that doesn’t keep the the anti-virus from running in the background and using up tons of resources. And when I try to remove it the usual way, by going to Start>Control Panel>Add and Remove Programs, it won’t uninstall. One older laptop computer I fixed in the last week had both expired Mcafee and Norton running, neither of which would uninstall. The poor computer was quite beleagured. And running very sloooo-ow.

So what I did was to go to the Mcafee site and search for their uninstall program. It works quite nicely, thank you very much.

Here it is http://service.mcafee.com/FAQDocument.aspx?id=TS100507

Follow Step 2, if you’ve tried Step 1 already.

This week I fixed a computer that booted through the Welcome screen and the login screen to a totally black screen with only the white cursor and nothing else. The poor cursor was in total darkness! I tried booting into Safe Mode and Last Good Configuration (that worked) and still the cursor stood alone. Heigh-ho the dairy-o, the cursor stood alone.

So I took out the hard drive and attached it to my own computer using this process. It’s not hard. All you need is another computer. And I ran checkdisk and defragmented the drive. Also I ran Malwarebytes and AVG on it.

After this I put the hard drive back in its own case and it booted up all the way through to the desktop. Yay!!!

But it took 3 minutes and 30 seconds to boot. Too slow. So I ran Malwarebytes and AVG again and did all my usual tricks to speed up the computer. When I was finished it booted in 40 seconds. Not bad, huh?
And the cursor stood on the restful TeleTubbies-like rolling green hill landscape of the default Windows XP wallpaper which, according to Wikipedia, was taken near Sonoma, California.

You can also check out How to Fix the Black Screen with White Cursor, Part Two.

I look forward to your comments.

Is your wireless computer mouse behaving erratically? Or not at all? One simple fix is to change the battery. One client of mine had trouble with her mouse, and she wanted to buy a new computer. Really all she needed to do was change the battery. There’s a battery compartment like on a radio or clicker, all you have to do is open it and change the battery. Just make sure your wireless cat is not around …

This week I fixed a machine that was rebooting after Windows started. A message said it was installing three updates and on the third of the three it reached 75% and then rebooted. Over and over and yes, over again. An update gone awry!!!

This is how Ms. Ducktoes fixed it. The client had a valid license but didn’t have an Vista install dvd so I borrowed one from another techie and stuck it in the dvd drive. Then rebooted the machine off the dvd. I selected the Repair option (don’t pick the Install!) Several options were listed and I picked System Restore. I picked the Restore point of the last update and voila, joy of joys, the computer started normally! It can happen to you, too, (music here) doo, doo, do, do!! Just try what I did.

Then bravely I installed every Vista update under the sun and all went smoothly this time around. Don’t be scared of updates. They do make your computer run better and more securely.

Please comment, your ideas are always welcome. Just click here, my dear.